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Florida Abandons Felons-To-Be-Purged Voting List

HeadlineJul 12, 2004

The state of Florida has thrown out its list of potential felons who shouldn’t vote in the November election, after the list was found to be deeply flawed. If the list had been used it could have helped George Bush win Florida in November. Of the 47,000 voters on the list, Latinos made up one tenth of one percent — even though roughly 20 percent of the state is Latino. Governor Jeb Bush claimed a mistake in the databases caused Latino names not to appear on the purge list. In Florida the Latino population, especially the Cuban immigrants, historically vote Republican. In addition the Miami Herald found nearly 2,500 felons, mostly African American, appeared on the list even though their voting rights had been restored. The makeup of the list was not publicly known until last week when a judge forced the state to make the secret list public. During the 2000 election, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris ordered the purging of tens of thousands of alleged felons from the rolls five months before the election. According to BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast the list included at least 8,000 voters, mostly African-American, who had only committed only misdemeanors and should not have been purged.

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