Chapter 5: The Reality of List Maintenance
The above report by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission details what happened in 2000 when the state of Florida hired a company, Choice Point, to go through state voter rolls and construct a “felons’ list,” that is, a list containing the names of people on voter rolls who were suspected of having a felony conviction that disqualified them from voting in Florida. These lists were then sent by the state to the counties without any verification that they were accurate. Counties were instructed to do that themselves, even though it was the state that had the necessary data for removing and restoring felon voting rights, not the counties. Later, it was found that Choice Point used an 80% matching threshold that falsely identified many qualified voters as being felons. While this report concerns persons with felony convictions, it is easy to see that attempts to scrub supposed illegal voters from voting rolls has the potential to disenfranchise legally registered voters.