In 1998, elections officials with the secretary of state's office secretly directed DBT to use "fuzzy" matches of first names such as John, Johnny and Joan. As a result, voter Johnny Little of Leon County was not allowed to vote in 2000, because of a crime committed by one Johnnie Little of "locale unknown." In this case, the legal names did not match, but the two Littles' birth date and race (both are black) did. Johnny Little was tagged for removal from voter rolls. Also, the state, over the objections of DBT, also ordered the company to ignore suffixes such as "Jr." and "II," and mismatches of middle initials.

As part of the NAACP's suit against Florida, ChoicePoint agreed to review all the scrub lists. The company's report, dated Aug. 19, 2002, indicates that of the 94,000 names on the lists, only 3,000 match the nine key criteria (including social security number) that experts -- including DBTs senior vice president, George Bruder -- have stated is necessary to avoid misidentification.

Even before the 2000 election, some county election officials, interviewed by Salon two years ago, had disobeyed the order of the secretary of state's office and disregarded the lists, deciding they were faulty. That included Madison County's election supervisor, Linda Howell, who found her own name erroneously among the "felons."

But many others did use the list -- and are likely to use it this year as well, because the state has not instructed them otherwise.

So what's the delay in yanking the faulty lists? Salon asked former Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who is also a congressional candidate this year. But calls to her attorney -- the ironically named John W. Little III, of Palm Beach -- went unreturned. Calls to the Florida Department of Elections were also not returned.

The racial bent of the scrub list  and its particular bias against Democrats -- was a foreseeable result of the purge methodology. African-Americans account for approximately 46 percent of felony convictions in the United States, so it's no surprise that ChoicePoint's report for the NAACP on its scrub lists found that less than half of those on the Florida list are identified as white. (The Voting Rights Act of 1965 requires Florida to ask voters to state their race on registration forms.)

Florida's black voters are expected to cast ballots by at least 4-1 against Jeb Bush on Nov. 5, according to a recent St. Petersburg Times poll. And a University of Minnesota study indicates that nine of 10 ex-cons, on leaving jail, vote Democratic, no matter their race.

Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way Foundation, which represented the NAACP in its suit, is disturbed by the state's foot-dragging. "They've known about the flaws in the list for at least two years, yet they come up with every excuse for not getting these names back on." Florida's slow efforts contrast markedly with the initial rush to purge those voters, accomplished in a matter of weeks. That first cleansing of the voter rolls occurred in 1998 under Harris' predecessor as secretary of state, Republican Sandra Mortham. At the time, Mortham overruled the objections of county elections officials in order to rush the purge's completion in a matter of weeks, just in time for Jeb Bush's first successful race for governor.

While some on the list were never scrubbed, tens of thousands of other citizens not on the purge list nevertheless lost their vote. They were wrongly denied the right to register. A directive from Gov. Jeb Bush's office dated Sept. 18, 2000, six weeks before the presidential election, ordered county officials to deny the vote to those convicted of felonies in other states. Two court rulings prior to the election directed the secretary of state to cease denying the civil rights of ex-cons who had relocated to Florida. Bush's clemency office corrected this error, affecting at least 40,000 citizens, but only on Feb. 23, 2001, after the presidential election.

The DBT purge list includes 2,800 such out-of-state felons whom Harris and Roberts, in the settlement with the NAACP, acknowledge should never have been purged.

That failure to restore those voters' rights in time for the governor's race especially troubles Larry Ottinger, co-counsel for the NAACP. "We should never have had to litigate this. They've admitted their error. There's simply no excuse for not returning this group of 2,800 to the rolls right now." The NAACP has been told that the state is waiting for reports from eight states to determine if any of these persons are still in jail or serving probationary sentences.

Florida paid DBT $4.3 million over three years to help identify felons illegally registered to vote, replacing a company that had charged the state only $5,700 per year for this work. DBT was chosen because the giant database operator, which aids the FBI on manhunts, offered to verify the accuracy of the list using several of its 1,200 databases, including change-of-address and driver's license records. DBT was also paid to verify the data by telephone calls, an arduous, costly, but necessary task where civil rights are involved.

State records show DBT was paid the millions to conduct the verification work. But, with the state's permission, DBT skipped those costly cross-checks. Last February, when asked to explain why DBT was paid for verification work not done, Florida Elections Division chief Clayton Roberts ended an agreed-upon interview with this reporter, locked himself in his office, and called in state troopers to remove this reporter from the Florida capitol building in Tallahassee.

This September, Roberts also signed a settlement with the NAACP, agreeing to reform the purge list. Roberts' explanation for why the list has not been dumped? He's not returning phone calls, either.

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