Florida scraps list of suspected felons barred from voting
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(CNN) -- Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood has decided to scrap a list that was intended to keep more than 47,000 suspected felons from voting in November.
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush agreed with the decision, his spokesman said Monday.
"The list will not be used," said Jacob DiPietre, a spokesman for Bush, whose state proved key to his brother's victory four years ago.
Hood decided over the weekend to dump the list, which was created by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, after news stories pointed out that the list included only 61 Hispanic names, DiPietre said.
The state's large Cuban population tends to vote Republican.
The exclusion was an honest mistake caused when two databases were merged, he said. "The way that the FDLE categorizes race and the way that you're allowed to do it on voters' cards and registration cards are two different ways."
Florida is one of seven states that bar felons who have served their sentences from voting, unless they have been granted clemency and re-registered to vote.
Felons who have not been granted clemency and who vote anyway are committing a felony in the third degree, and can be fined up to $5,000 and/or sentenced to five years in prison, said Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for the department of state.
Without the list to guide them, it is now up to each of the state's 47 county supervisors to devise their own lists of former felons who should not be allowed to vote.
"They've already been in the process of doing that for several months now," DiPietre said. Some county supervisors throughout the state had questioned whether they had the capacity or the time to verify the names on the list before November.
Public scrutiny of the list became possible earlier this month after a Florida state court judge declared unconstitutional a law restricting access to the list of 47,763 suspected felons. The judge ruled in favor of CNN and other news organizations that filed a lawsuit to obtain a copy of the list.
In 2000, a similar list was the center of controversy when state officials acknowledged after the election that it contained thousands of names in error, thus barring eligible people from voting.
Many of the barred voters were African-Americans, who traditionally tend to vote Democratic. Bush won the state by a 537-vote margin and, with it, the presidency.
The voter-exclusion list was compiled from state clemency reports, lists of felons and other databases.
