Nearly 1,700 Felons Removed From Florida's Voter Rolls

Nearly 1,700 felons have been removed from the voter rolls in at least 32 Florida counties. Nine counties have not removed any voters from their rolls in that period, including Miami-Dade, the second-largest county with more than 1 million registered voters. The removals have come in the months since the state scrapped a list of tens of thousands of potential felons to be removed from the state's voter rolls. Florida is one of only a handful of states that does not automatically restore voting rights to convicted felons when they complete their sentence. The purge of felons by election officials has been a hot-button issue since the 2000 presidential election, in which many citizens discovered at the polls they weren't allowed to vote. In May, Secretary of State Glenda Hood released a list of nearly 48,000 people identified as potential felons who could be removed. The list was scrapped in July after it was reported that it contained few people identified as Hispanic. Supervisors were told to revert to their original procedure to remove the felons, which was to act on information received from the local clerk of courts. [more ]