ChoicePoint's Mythical Role in Elections Past and Present
August 7, 2006There is a great deal of misinformation regarding ChoicePoint’s role in the 2000 presidential election as well as its current role, or lack of, in the elections of other countries. On the second point and in specific rebuttal to the Internet-driven lie that ChoicePoint or any subsidiary of ChoicePoint played a role of any kind, at any level and at any time in the 2006 Mexican presidential elections, the answer is an unqualified, “Not True.” As for the 2000 American presidential elections, the following facts should facilitate a true understanding of what did and did not occur:
- ChoicePoint did not perform the legally required review of Florida voter rolls used in the 2000 Presidential election. Rather, ChoicePoint acquired the company that did – Database Technologies – after DBT had delivered the initial 2000 voter exception list to Florida officials for verification.
- The DBT contract was granted by the Florida Secretary of State who preceded Katherine Harris, not by Ms. Harris herself.
- DBT was under contract with the State of Florida from late 1998 through 2000 to create a list, under the Florida voting fraud statute, of registered voters who were possibly deceased, may have been registered in more than one county, or may have been convicted felons. DBT did not actually remove anyone from a voter registration roll.
- Race was not used as identifying criteria in the review of the Florida voter rolls.
- In 1999, DBT employees assigned to the project advised the state that the review criteria developed and required by the state could produce a list that would be over-inclusive. This meant that the list, as it was designed by the State, could misidentify individuals as deceased, registered in more than one county and/or as convicted felons, when, in fact, they were not. State officials replied that was acceptable because county election supervisors were legally required to verify the information before any voter was removed from the registration rolls.
The United States Civil Rights Commission, in its official report on the 2000 Presidential Elections, concluded the following: (http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/vote2000/report/ch5.htm);
CONCLUSION
Historically, individuals convicted of certain types of crimes alleged to be committed more by African Americans are affected by felon disenfranchisement. The practice of felon disenfranchisement has resulted in the greater likelihood of people of color, particularly African Americans, appearing erroneously on the Florida felon exclusion list.
In claiming to address the same types of fraud found during the 1997 Miami mayoral election, the Florida legislature enacted chapter 98.0975 of the Florida statutes, which required the Division of Elections to contract with a private entity to purge its voter file of deceased persons, duplicate registrants, individuals declared mentally incompetent, and convicted felons without civil rights restoration. As a result, DBT Online was eventually retained to assist the Division of Elections in the removal of ineligible voter registrants from the voter file.
DBT Online performed an automated matching process against databases provided by the state of Florida and its own databases. Ultimately 173,127 Floridians were identified as potentially ineligible to vote in the November 2000 presidential election. Of those on the list, 57,746 were identified as convicted felons. Based on DBT Online’s statistical verification, the list it provided to the Division of Elections was 99.9 percent accurate. The Division of Elections distributed the relevant portions of the list to the 67 supervisors of elections.
The Division of Elections instructed DBT Online to verify the clemency status of any alleged convicted felon, even those convicted in states with automatic civil rights restoration, with the Florida Executive Clemency Board. Among those states with their own executive clemency boards, DBT Online was instructed to confirm the alleged felons’ clemency status with the board. The methodology adopted by DBT Online to verify the clemency status of those alleged felons basically consisted of faxing a list to the appropriate state agency.
DBT Online was not required to provide a list of exact name matches. Rather, the matching logic only required a 90 percent name match, which produced “false positives” or partial matches of the data. Moreover, the Division of Elections required that DBT Online perform “nickname matches” for first names and to “make it go both ways.” Thus, the name Deborah Ann would also match the name Ann Deborah.
At a meeting in early 1999, the supervisors of elections expressed a preference for exact matches on the list as opposed to a “fairly broad and encompassing” collection of names. DBT Online advised the Division of Elections that it could produce a list with exact matches. Despite this, the Division of Elections nevertheless opted to cast a wide net for the exclusion lists.
Former director of the Division of Elections, Ethel Baxter, in 1998, recommended to the supervisors of elections that if there was any doubt as to the accuracy of an individual’s status, the voter should be allowed to vote by affidavit. Despite knowing the exclusion lists contained many errors, there is no record that the Division of Elections provided similar cautionary advice to the supervisors of elections for the 2000 presidential election. The evidence does show that some election officials decided that it further served the state’s interests to capture as many names as possible on these exclusion lists.
The process by which each county verified its exclusion list was as varied and unique as the supervisors of elections themselves. Some supervisors of elections sent letters to the alleged felons and held hearings to allow them to produce evidence of their clemency status or establish they were on the list in error. Other supervisors chose not to use the exclusion list at all.
Although the Commission’s record reflects that the Division of Elections is responsible for coordinating two statewide workshops annually for the supervisors of elections to ensure uniformity in the interpretation of Florida election laws, the complaints registered by some supervisors of elections suggest that there was no common understanding of the use of the exclusion lists. The Florida legislature’s decision to privatize its list maintenance procedures without establishing effective clear guidance for these private efforts from the highest levels, coupled with the absence of uniform and reliable verification procedures, resulted in countless eligible voters being deprived of their right to vote.
