Florida 2000 and Washington 2004

Kirsanow references the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post studies, and Thernstrom and Redenbaugh's dissenting statement (2001) for his conclusions (three of the four primary sources). He repeated them in an October 2004 interview with Brit Hume on Fox News where Kirsanow informed us that,

"The allegation, at least the principle allegation at the outset is that blacks were more likely to be placed on the list than whites. And the insinuation or the inference to be drawn from that that this was somehow part of a scheme to disenfranchise certain types of voters. The facts are that twice as many whites were improperly placed on the ballot, on the felon purge list as blacks. And in addition to that, as The Miami Herald found, approximately 6,500 ineligible voters, ineligible felons did in fact vote, and as they concluded, the biggest problem with the felon purge list was that it permitted felons to vote."

(Fox News, 2004)

Hume asked Kirsanow how many lawful voters were actually disenfranchised by the list, "We talking about hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands?" This was "difficult to ascertain", Kirsanow replied, but he guessed that the actual figure was "Probably in the hundreds." Once again, he referred to Thernstrom & Redenbaugh's dissenting statement. This, and the Herald and Post studies are the only sources he referred to in this interview, the October 2003 commentary, or in any other editorial of his I found, of which there were quite a few. At no time did he properly cite these sources in any of them. Thernstrom and Redenbaugh did cite the Miami Herald study (Merzer, 2001) and a May 27, 2001 article from the Palm Beach Post in their dissention (Hiaasen et al., 2001). Once again, these three sources--one of which merely repeats the other two--were the only ones referred to by Kirsanow, Thernstrom and Redenbaugh, and every defense of the Florida 2000 election I was able to find regarding the felon list.

I soon discovered that there was a good reason for this.

The Post article reports the results of their study which used a computer analysis to compare the felon list with FDLE criminal records and Election Day voters. They found that 5,683 Floridians who had cast votes matched both lists by name, date of birth, race and gender (where information on the latter were available). In their dissent Thernstrom and Redenbaugh state on page 8 that,

"According to the Palm Beach Post, more than 6,500 ineligible felons voted."

(Thernstrom & Redenbaugh, 2001)

On page 47 they criticized the commission's focus on error in the felon list stating that,

"In pursuing its attack on the purge list, the Commission completely ignored the bigger story: Approximately 5,600 felons voted illegally in Florida on November 7, approximately 68 percent of whom were registered Democrats."

(Thernstrom & Redenbaugh, 2001)

No reference was cited for either of these figures, but on page 48 they cite Hiaasen et al. (2001) in the Palm Beach Post in support of another figure of 6,500. There, they list several conclusions reached by the Palm Beach Post study including their finding that "more than 6,500 [felons] were convicted in counties other than where they voted, suggesting they would not have been found by local officials without the DBT list" (Hiaasen et al., 2001).

5,600 felons? 6,500? Which is it? Thernstrom and Redenbaugh make no statements clarifying either number and nothing I was able to find anywhere in their dissention indicates that they even noticed the difference. Both are referred at different places as "illegal felons who voted".

The Post analysis retrieved exact and partial matches to combinations of name, birthdate, race, and gender between FDLE and DBT records. What they actually found was that 5,683 records matched exactly by name and 6,500 partially matched any of the criteria—a direct result of Harris and the FDE having lowered DBT's matching requirements. Another Post article published the very next day by the same authors (Hiaasen et al., 2001b) describes this study and cites the 5,683 figure with details. Thernstrom and Redenbaugh didn't cite this one. Other than a passing remark about some "regrettable" errors in the felon list, they also made no serious attempt to address the errors in either it or the FDLE database. They did mention the FDLE's attempts to screen their own data, quoting FDLE's General Counsel Michael Ramage in support of the effort. Other than his comments, no specifics were provided. Ramage even confirmed that half of FDLE's records were incorrect regarding felon status, confirming the higher error estimate I quotes for that database earlier. Thernstrom and Redenbaugh quickly passed over this without comment.

In other words, the flawed felon list was compared to the same flawed FDLE database that nearly all of its own data had been taken from using sloppy record matches to prove that more than 5,600 or 6,500 (pick one) felons had voted. Essentially, this is their entire case.

At various points they report either the exact name match or partial record match figures. Kirsanow appears to have chosen their partial match figure and cited it verbatim. Nowhere in his statements or in Thernstrom and Redenbaugh's dissention is there any indication of an understanding of where these figures came from or what they represent.

Yet Far-Right forums nationwide have been repeating them uncritically ever since.

On page 47 Thernstrom and Redenbaugh go on to say that,

"According to recent studies, the total number of wrongly-purged alleged felons was 1,104, including 996 convicted of crimes in other states and 108 who were not felons. This number contradicts the Commission’s claim that 'countless' voters were wrongly disenfranchised because of inaccuracies in the list.

Most notably, the Commission did not hear from a single witness who was prevented from voting as a result of being erroneously identified as a felon."

(Thernstrom & Redenbaugh, 2001)

Once again no citations are provided for the wrongly-purged felon figure, here or anywhere else. A search of the Internet reveals numerous other references to the 1,104 figure in conservative forums. Virtually every one merely quotes Thernstrom and Redenbaugh without providing any citations of their own. Eventually, I found an article in Legal Affairs (Taylor, 2001) that quoted it with the comment that it had come from "a study by the Palm Beach Post"—yet again without a citation that could be checked (what is it with these people and their inability to document their claims?). The reference appears to be to the same Palm Beach Post study from which Thernstrom and Redenbaugh obtained their felon voter figures which made reference to "at least 1,100 eligible voters wrongly purged from the rolls before last year's election" (Hiaasen et al., 2001).

So once again, we're back to the same comparison between two self-referencing flawed lists, and as before there is no evidence of anyone having checked where their figures came from or how they were derived. It's noteworthy that Hiaasen et al. said at least 1,100. As noted earlier, use of the felon list by county was sporadic. Some, like Volusia, used it at face value and made no attempt to verify its contents. Others refused to use it altogether. Of those that did use it, most made some attempt to check listings. In most cases this was done by mailing letters to those listed asking for confirmation. In a few cases, newspaper advertisements were also used. Those who were wrongly listed and responded to these efforts were cleared. Anyone who did not remained disenfranchised. Many of those caught in the snare later reported that they had not received a letter or been notified in any way. Lower income voters, who were heavily represented on the felon list, often reside in temporary housing and move regularly making them difficult to reach. Others may simply have decided that it wasn't worth the fight. In many cases, letters were not even sent to these people. Leon County for instance had a list with 690 names but sent notification letters to only 33 of these people (Lantigua, 2001).

Whatever the reason accuracy checks via outreach will be based on respondent data only. If anything, these are conservative estimates of disenfranchisement. They will not reflect those who did not receive notification before Election Day or those who did not, or could not respond. This is even implied in the actual listings themselves. Of those on the 2000 list, 3,533 were identified as "possible matches" only. Of these, 1,404 were for SSN and last name only, and 1,919 were for last name and a derived SSN (Stuart, 2004). How many "possible" matches might there be in the entire state of Florida for someone named "Smith" or "Jones" and the indirectly derived SSN of a felon with either last name? There were more people in the latter category alone than Thernstrom and Redenbaugh's alleged total. The two categories together are over three times that figure. It's difficult to believe that the total number of people wrongly purged by the list was only a third of the number of fuzzy name matches on the list, before consideration of how many of the FDLE records being matched were correct to begin with.

Thernstrom and Redenbaugh's dissent was published in June of 2001, concurrent with the USCCR report. As news of the felon list debacle continued to spread, more of those wrongly listed came forward and challenged their status in court. Cases continued through the following year and beyond. By September of 2002 2,347 people had won (LCCRUL, 2002).

What about the claim that whites were twice as likely to be wrongly listed as blacks? Surely that disproves the USCCR report's claim that the felon list was racially biased doesn't it? This time Thernstrom and Redenbaugh did present their case. On page 46 they state that,

"The sole piece of supporting evidence [the report] cites a table with data on Miami-Dade County. Blacks were racially targeted, according to the report, because they account for almost two thirds of the names of the felon list but were less than one-seventh of Florida’s population.

This might seem a striking disparity. But it ignores the sad fact that African Americans are greatly over-represented in the population of persons committing felonies--in Florida and in the United States as a whole. The Majority Report never bothers to ask what the proportion is. Without demonstrating that less than two-thirds of the previously convicted felons living in Miami-Dade County were African American, the racial disproportion on the felon list is completely meaningless."

(Thernstrom & Redenbaugh, 2001)

Once again the "racial targeting" straw man is wheeled out, but apart from that the basic point is correct. There is no reason statistically to expect the felon list as a whole to reflect the same racial demographics as the general Florida population. As they said, the state's inmate population and incarceration rates are disproportionately black and we would expect the racial breakdown of the felon list to be closer to this. While this disproportionality might reflect other racially slanted problems with society at large, that is another question altogether and beyond the scope of how the felon list was handled. Thernstrom and Redenbaugh rightly assert that apart from a demonstration that the felon list is slanted toward blacks in greater proportions than would be expected from the state's felony conviction trends by race, the USCCR has not shown that the list's preparation was racially slanted.

Beyond this, their case falls apart quickly. The table they referred to was Table 1-4 from the USCCR report which presented erroneous listings on the 1999 and 2000 felon lists for Miami-Dade County broken down by race and successful appeals. They go on to say that,

"The table reveals that 239 for the 4,678 African Americans on the Miami-Dade felons’ list objected when they were notified that they were ineligible to vote and were cleared to participate. They represented 5.1 percent of the total number of blacks on the felons list. Of the 1,264 whites on the list, 125 proved to be there by mistake--which is 9.9 percent of the total. Thus, the error rate for whites was almost double that for blacks."

(Thernstrom & Redenbaugh, 2001)