Via the Sun Sentinel:

“More than 30,000 Florida felons who by law should have been stripped of their right to vote remain registered to cast ballots in this presidential battleground state, a Sun Sentinel investigation has found.

Many are faithful voters, with at least 4,900 turning out in past elections.

Another 5,600 are not likely to vote Nov. 4 — they’re still in prison.

Of the felons who registered with a party, Democrats outnumber Republicans more than two to one.

Florida’s elections chief, Secretary of State Kurt Browning, acknowledged his staff has failed to remove thousands of ineligible felons because of a shortage of workers and a crush of new registrations in this critical swing state.

Browning said he was not surprised by the newspaper’s findings. “I’m kind of shocked that the number is as low as it is,” he said.

Asked how many ineligible felons may be on Florida’s rolls, Browning said, “We don’t know.”

The Division of Elections has a backlog of more than 108,000 possible felons who have registered to vote since January 2006 that it hasn’t had the time or staff to verify. Browning estimated that about 10 percent, once checked, would be ineligible.

“This is part of a big mess,” said Jeff Manza, professor of sociology at New York University and author of a book on felon voting. “It’s almost certain there will be challenges if the election is close enough that things hinge on this. Both parties are armed to the teeth with legal talent in all the battleground states.”

Florida’s felon ban originated before the Civil War, and today the state remains one of 10 that restrict some felons from voting even after they’ve served their time. The law requires state and county elections officials to remove felons from voter rolls after conviction and add them only when they’ve won clemency to restore their voting rights.

In 2007, the state eased the restrictions by granting automatic clemency to most nonviolent offenders who have completed their sentences. Others, including people convicted of federal offenses, multiple felonies or crimes such as drug trafficking, murder and sex charges, must still apply for clemency and have their cases reviewed.

The felons the Sun Sentinel identified never received clemency, but their names remain on Florida’s voter rolls. Some are well-known: ex-Broward Sheriff Ken Jenne and ex-Palm Beach County Commissioner Tony Masilotti, for instance, both convicted last year of public corruption.

Browning said the state painstakingly checks all voters before removing them to avoid inadvertently taking off eligible voters as happened in two previous large-scale purge attempts.”

Not surprising since ACORN has been canvasing Florida since 2006 in massive “Get Out the Vote” drives. Two weeks ago suspicious registrations via ACORN were discovered in Seminole County, and other Florida counties.

On Friday the GOP took the offensive, noting that the Florida Attorney General’s Office is investigating.

“Depending on your politics, the nonprofit group ACORN is either the
nation’s largest organizer of low-income and minority consumers and workers
or a corrupt arm of Democrat Barack Obama’s urban political machine.

Its voter-registration drive in Brevard County was part of a national
effort that signed up 1.3 million people in 21 states, says the group,
whose full name is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform
Now. The drive also has spurred accusations of voter fraud in Florida,
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada, Colorado — swing states, in other words.
Allegations have centered on workers who were paid per registration and
might have faked applications.

Here in Brevard, the Supervisor of Elections reports:

— About 1,320 voter-registration applications were delivered by
“third-party” workers for ACORN from last Friday through Monday.

— Up to two-thirds of those “are people who were already registered,”
said Assistant Elections Supervisor Duwayne Lundren.

— The elections office referred 23 applications, or 1.7 percent, to
the State Attorney’s Office for investigation of possible fraud.

For instance, two applications appeared to come from the same man at
the same address, but with two different signatures, Lundren said. When the
election office contacted the man, he said he never completed any
application.

“There is an investigation in process,” State Attorney Norm Wolfinger
told me. “It shouldn’t be that long before we move on this.” …”