Fla. Counties to be told 1,300 felons have voting rights.

Florida election officials are preparing to tell county election supervisors to restore voting rights to as many as 1,300 people wrongfully removed from the rolls four years ago. "Do I think this should have happened sooner? Yes. But I'm happy it is finally happening at all," said Elliot Mincberg, general counsel for People for the American Way, one of several civil rights groups that sued Florida over its 2000 voter purge.A 2002 court settlement between Secretary of State Glenda Hood and the NAACP promised that Florida would work to identify and restore voting rights to thousands of voters wrongfully purged before that presidential election. In March, those civil rights groups forced the state back into mediation, accusing Hood's office of dragging its feet. The state in September identified 1,451 who committed felony crimes in states that do not strip them of their voting rights. But Hood's office never told county supervisors about most of them -- even though state files show the Secretary of State had in hand a list of more than 500 Florida voters who had completed their Ohio sentences. "It's a more complicated process than, you walk out of jail and you get your rights back," said Nash. But in Ohio, that is the process. [more]