The Arkansas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union this week renewed a call for information about people who had been removed from voter rolls earlier this year, and demanded that Secretary of State Mark Martin ensure that none of those who were mistakenly removed are turned away at the polls.
The ACLU's letter was in regard to Martin's office sending county officials flawed data marking some voters as felons. The list of names, which was sent by Martin's office to all 75 county clerks in June, contained 7,730 registered voters who were flagged as felons in data from the Arkansas Crime Information Center.
About 4,000 of the flagged voters had never been convicted of a felony but erroneously showed up on the list because the information incorrectly included decades-old cases from municipal courts, which cannot try felony cases.
County clerks also reported that the list included the names of felons who have had their voting rights restored. Brad Cazort, the repository administrator for the Arkansas Crime Information Center, said it does not keep track of felons who have gone through the process of restoring their voting rights.
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The state is in its second week of early voting before Tuesday's election.
In an attempt to determine voters who may have been mistakenly flagged, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request with Martin's office on Aug. 3 seeking records to show who was flagged and why.
According to the ACLU's letter sent to Martin on Tuesday, his office responded with records showing how the office received the faulty data and what instructions were given to county clerks. But Martin's office did not provide a list of affected voters despite several requests for one, the ACLU letter said.
According to Holly Dickson, the ACLU attorney who wrote the letter, Martin's handling of the flawed data and refusal to provide more information about the voter rolls is a violation of both the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act and the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.
The letter demands that Martin's office stop sharing any flawed felon data, and also restore the registration of anyone erroneously removed from the rolls and produce the requested list of voters. If the office doesn't respond, Dickson said, the group could file a federal lawsuit.
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"This is our official notice to the secretary of state to clean up his act," Dickson said Wednesday, adding that the ACLU has not received a response.
A spokesman for Martin's office did not answer several calls Tuesday and Wednesday and said in an email that he would not comment on the letter.
In addition to its requests for information from Martin's office, Dickson said, the ACLU is in the process of asking each of the 75 counties to provide their lists of voters flagged by the Arkansas Crime Information Center data, as well as which voters, if any, were removed from the rolls. Dickson said most of the counties had complied with the request but that the ACLU had yet to compile the information into one list.
Although Martin is the state's chief election official, only county clerks may add or remove names from voter registration rolls. However, Amendment 51 to the Arkansas Constitution requires that clerks remove voters from the rolls within 10 days if they receive information requiring a cancellation of voter status, such as death or a conviction of a felony.
Felons may only regain the right to vote in Arkansas after being discharged from their sentences and paying all related costs or fees, or after being pardoned.
After initially sending the flawed data to the county clerks, Martin's office began to caution clerks about the accuracy of the information.
On June 30, Martin's office emailed the clerks to "wait for further correspondence" before making changes to the voter rolls, according to a subsequent letter sent to the clerks from Chief Deputy Secretary of State Kelly Boyd. A copy of the letter, which described the secretary of state's office's attempts to communicate concerns with the county clerks, was obtained by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
According to Boyd's letter, Martin's office told clerks on July 6 that they could request to reset any canceled registrations, but only five counties made such a request. Boyd's letter, which was sent Aug. 9, told clerks not to remove any voters from the rolls without independently verifying their eligibility.
Several county clerks contacted Wednesday said they had either taken no action to remove voters included in the flawed felon data, or had assigned workers to dig through county archives and online court records to verify each voter's eligibility.
Cazort, reached Tuesday at an FBI conference in St. Louis, said that once the Crime Information Center determined that about 4,000 people had been incorrectly labeled as felons, it sent a list of those names to Martin's office. None of the clerks interviewed for this article said they received that information.
Pulaski County Clerk Larry Crane said his office had 13 workers spend a total of nearly 500 hours reviewing the 1,732 names sent to him by Martin's office. Of those names, 611 were marked for cancellation, and notices were sent to each voter.
Only a handful replied and were able to show further proof that they should remain on the rolls, Crane said.
"My concern is that 75 counties handled this differently. I'm worried there may still be incorrectly flagged voters" in other counties, Crane said. "I'm glad the ACLU is bringing the issue to the forefront."
Despite having voted for the past 20 years, a 49-year-old voter in Cleburne County, who asked that his name not be used because of his decades-old drug conviction, said his name was marked as ineligible on the rolls when he went to vote early at the county seat last week.
After receiving a letter this summer notifying him that his registration was marked to be canceled, the voter said, he had to get his records from the Department of Correction to show he had completed his sentence. After notifying election officials at the polling location, he said, they were able to look up his records and allowed him to cast a ballot.
"It just feels like I'm going to be harassed every time I go to vote," he said.
Cleburne County Sheriff Paul Muse said 49 of the 69 names sent to him by Martin's office either never responded to letters or were determined to be ineligible to vote. About a quarter of the nearly 18,000 registered voters had voted early as of Wednesday, Muse said, adding he knew of no one being sent away due to the felon data.
Metro on 11/03/2016