No Accountability: Phony Florida Felons List Was Just An Accident

FLORIDA election officials were lax in their oversight of the company that created a flawed database of felons and dead voters, but there was no intent to disenfranchise anyone, an internal audit of the project found.

The audit by the Department of State's inspector general, released yesterday, concerned the state's now-cancelled contract with the consulting firm Accenture, which was paid $US2.3 million ($2.95 million) to create the database.

The list, primarily intended to help local elections officials purge voter rolls of convicted felons without voting rights and people who had died since the last election, matched a list of registered voters with other lists of deaths and criminal records sent in by other state agencies.

Secretary of State Glenda Hood's office abandoned the project earlier this year after acknowledging that 2500 former felons were on the list even though their voting rights had been restored and that, due to a technical glitch, Hispanics were largely absent from the list. Hispanics often vote Republican in Florida, and some critics questioned whether there was intent to purge some felons, but not others.