Secretary of State Mark Martin's office has denied a request from the state Democratic Party seeking records related to how the office distributed flawed data on felons to county clerks across the state.
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County clerks were to use the data to determine whether any of the felons needed to be struck from voter rolls, but the data included some who had regained the right to vote.
"We do not believe we are under an obligation to disclose these records," said secretary of state's office spokesman Chris Powell in an email Monday to Chris Burks of the Sanford Law Firm.
Burks is acting as legal counsel to the state Democratic Party. Powell's email did not state a reason for the denial. On Tuesday, Powell did not respond to multiple requests for comment, including several requests to interview Martin, a Republican.
According to the state Freedom of Information Act, "It is vital in a democratic society that public business be performed in an open and public manner so that the electors shall be advised of the performance of public officials and of the decisions that are reached in public activity and in making public policy."
Under the law, records are considered open to the public unless otherwise exempt.
The state Democratic Party's request, sent Aug. 3, sought correspondence between the secretary of state's office and the Arkansas Crime Information Center; documents relating to felons who have regained the right to vote; communications with county clerks; documents related to the Department of Health list of recently deceased Arkansans; internal emails; and the updated list of felons provided to each county clerk.
Among other documents, the state Democratic Party also requested any "work logs, time sheets, or other records or documents that documented the time worked or paid for to/by Mark Martin, A.J. Kelly and Kelly Boyd since January of 2016 to present."
H.L. Moody, a spokesman for the party, said it had filed a similar request with the Arkansas Crime Information Center.
The center cited statutory exemptions from disclosing records it possessed that included criminal history, but disclosed other records relevant to the request that were not exempt.
The Democratic Party received 906 pages of emails from the center.
There may be valid legal reasons to deny a request to send the felon database, but failing to turn over the emails -- many of which were handed over by the Arkansas Crime Information Center -- is ridiculous, Moody said.
On Aug. 1 , the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette filed a request for "all correspondence between counties and the Secretary of State's office regarding the voter list updates." The newspaper received that correspondence on Aug. 3, the same day the state Democratic Party made its request.
The party sought "documents relating to communication to county clerks that they can request for the database in their county to be reset to how it was before the update on felons that was sent in error" and "documents relating to the [secretary of state's] elections division instructing clerks' offices to verify whether someone has restored voting rights and to verify their felon status before removing them from the database." The party's request was denied.
Moody said the party is considering its legal options.
"We were wanting to get to the bottom of what the instructions [to the county clerks] actually were," he said. "That seems to be what they don't want to give up."
Holly Dickson, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, said she also has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the secretary of state's office. She said she expected a response to her request on Friday.
In June, the secretary of state's office notified county clerks that it had updated the statewide voter database by flagging registered voters convicted of felonies.
The data used were previously generated by Arkansas Community Correction, but when the Community Correction employee who normally processed the data died, updates lapsed.
After reading Amendment 51 to the Arkansas Constitution, Martin's office determined that it should request the information from the Arkansas Crime Information Center.
It requested and received the complete database of people convicted of felonies -- which contained 193,549 names -- and merged the information into the statewide voter-registration system.
There were 7,730 people in the voter database flagged as felons as a result. Peyton Murphy, assistant director of elections, sent a letter to clerks on July 6 stating that "there is the potential for some errors to occur" with those voters identified as felons. The problems generally fell into two categories. Some individuals have felony convictions but have since been discharged or pardoned. Others never have had felony convictions, he said.
County clerks have been left to figure out whether each of the 7,730 people is a felon and, if so, whether each had already gone through the process to restore voting rights.
Amendment 51 to the Arkansas Constitution allows felons to regain the right to vote when they "provide the county clerk with proof from the appropriate state or local agency, or office that the felon has been discharged from probation or parole, has paid all probation or parole fees, or has satisfied all terms of imprisonment, and paid all applicable court costs, fines, or restitution."
The Arkansas Crime Information Center data -- with convictions dating to the 1970s -- did not note whether felons had gone through that process.
"We want to know what happened and who it affected," Moody said. "We're just trying to get to the bottom of this."
Metro on 08/10/2016