By Larry Barszewski
Sun-Sentinel
(July 31, 2017)
Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes may be fighting a federal lawsuit, but she testified Tuesday that it has already pushed her to do more to uncover people who should be removed from the county’s voting rolls.
Snipes is in court defending her office against accusations brought by the conservative that the county has thousands of ineligible voters on its lists. The ACRU, a Virginia-based nonprofit, is asking U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom to order the county to take additional steps in purging names that don’t belong on the rolls. The ACRU claims the county in recent years has had more voters on its rolls than eligible voting-age residents, or at the very least, that it has close to a 100 percent voter registration that it says is “improbable.”
The trial in federal court in Miami could set a national precedent for how aggressive election officials need to be in removing non-voters from their rolls. The ACRU and other conservative groups have been challenging voter roll information in states and counties across the country.
Snipes said she is doing everything the law requires to keep the county’s voting rolls up to date, for the most part relying on the state to provide needed information about voters who have died or committed felonies, and using change of address information to start clear rolls every two years of people who have moved. But testifying on Monday, Snipes said she is taking additional measures suggested by one of ACRU’s expert witnesses.
The elections office began receiving jury recusal information this year from the Broward clerk of courts about residents who filed forms saying they could not serve on a jury because they were either a non-citizen or a convicted felon, Snipes said. The elections office can cross-reference that information against its voter rolls to see if any are voters that should be removed for the same reasons.
Snipes also testified her office is preparing to apply to be connected to the state’s Driver and Vehicle Information Database, known as DAVID, produced by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. It is another tool the office can use for voter residency verification and citizenship status.
And Snipes said her office would consider using the Social Security Death Index as a way of tracking deaths of voters that occur in other states.
Snipes acknowledged the processes her office have been using aren’t perfect and that some non-citizens and felons have voted despite not being eligible — especially right before major elections when groups are actively registering new voters. But Snipes said the precautions her office takes are important to make sure eligible voters aren’t removed from the lists by mistake.
Burnadette Norris-Weeks, the election office’s attorney, said the changes Snipes is making are “no admission of guilt.” Instead, it shows that Snipes is open to changes, she said. Norris-Weeks questioned whether the jury recusal information would be that much of an asset and said it may duplicate reports that county is already receiving from the state.
One major reason behind the county’s inflated rolls is the notices and waiting periods the elections office has to observe before most ineligible voters can be removed, Snipes and other office workers have testified. Voters whose addresses have changed can be put on an inactive list, but they can’t be completely removed from the voting rolls until two general elections — which occur every two years — have passed.
“Some of them are not eligible to vote and they slip through,” Snipes said. “When it does happen, we try to jump on it right away,” she later added.
J. Christian Adam of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, who is representing the ACRU, said that time could be shortened if those voters returned signed documents verifying their names should be removed. When Adams asked if the elections office sends out mailings that include postcards with people to sign and return if they have moved, Snipes said she was unaware of any such mailings.
Adams questioning of Snipes began with a run-through of problems her office had last year alone: Voter cards with incorrect addresses mailed out to about 1,700 Davie and Cooper City voters; a printed ballot that had the word “no” in Haitian Creole where it should have read “wi” [yes]; and ballots mailed out that were missing the constitutional amendment on medical marijuana.
The trial, which has gone on for four days, is expected to wrap up on Wednesday. It’s uncertain when Bloom will rule.
