Florida voting rolls contain dead people, duplicates, ineligible felons

Multiple registrations. Dead people. A growing number of felons. A Sun Sentinel investigation finds more problems with our voting rolls.

By Peter Franceschina, Sally Kestin, John Maines, Megan O'Matz and Dana Williams

October 29, 2008

Mattie Lee Blitch has been dead 23 years but she's still registered to vote in Palm Beach County.

Recent college graduate Brett Ackerman is registered three times in two counties.

And convicted felon Joseph Muro just signed up to vote — from a state mental institution for the criminally insane.

With balloting well under way in the general election, the Sun Sentinel found more than 65,000 ineligible and duplicate voters on Florida's registration rolls.

That includes at least 600 dead people, 32,000 voters registered more than once and a growing number of convicted felons — now more than 33,000 — who by law should not be allowed to cast ballots.

Political analysts say the potential for widespread fraud in the names of dead or duplicate voters is low, although dead voters did play a role in the 1997 Miami mayor's race. Ineligible felons, however, could influence a close election in a state that decided the 2000 presidential race by 537 votes.

Florida is not alone with its sloppy registrations, despite a federal law requiring states to keep accurate voter rolls. The Help America Vote Act required states to develop voter registration databases "largely in response to Florida in 2000 because, really, a good registration roll is the basis of a good election," said Dan Seligson, editor of electionline .org, operated by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.

Florida has spent more than $22 million on its voter database, launched in 2006. The state Division of Elections is responsible for identifying duplicate and ineligible voters, and the counties are supposed to remove them. Elections officials at both levels acknowledge problems but blame each other.

They say massive voter-registration drives in a historic election have left little time to clean up the rolls. But the Sun Sentinel found officials make scant headway even in non-election lulls, with many ineligible voters remaining on the rolls for years.

Counties also handle removals in vastly different ways, with some purging thousands of voters each year and others removing only a few, records show.

"I think Florida has always presented, or at least since 2000, an environment that is ripe for lawsuits, and this certainly doesn't do anything to diminish that," Seligson said.

Felon voter surge

In the final five weeks before voter registration closed Oct. 6, Florida added more than 2,600 ineligible felons to the rolls.

That's on top of the more than 30,700 the Sun Sentinel previously identified as of the end of August.

In Florida, felons can vote only after their rights have been restored through clemency. The newspaper found the state checks felons' criminal histories and clemency status only after they register and had a backlog of 108,000 still to be reviewed.

At the Florida Civil Commitment Center in Arcadia, a psychiatric lockup for pedophiles and rapists, seven men registered in 2004 and remain on the voter rolls.

"We have 100 percent convicted felons who are also sex offenders, so nobody should be eligible," said Timothy Budz, center administrator.

Among the recently registered ineligible felons are Joseph Muro and another patient at Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee, home to people found mentally incompetent to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity.

Another man signed up three days after being released from prison in Palm Beach County.

One new felon voter listed a West Palm Beach Catholic charity for the homeless as his address. Among the crimes on his record: voter fraud.

Long dead

Mary Agnes Belden was surprised to learn her mother, Mattie Lee Blitch, is still registered to vote in Florida. The elementary school teacher always was an avid voter — before her death in Jacksonville in April 1985.