Open Voter Purge List

Florida's flawed election of 2000 put a cloud over the presidency and made the state the laughing stock of the nation. One reason: A wildly inaccurate voter purge list that mistakenly identified 8,000 Floridians as felons thus ineligible to vote and that listed 2,300 felons, despite the fact that the state had restored their civil rights.

Approaching another election, the state has a new purge list, with more than 47,000 names. But officials are not worried about a recurrence of the 2000 embarrassment.

Why? Because legislators passed a law in 2001 keeping voter rolls, and the purge list, secret.

The law presumably protects the privacy of voters (although the lists are available to political parties and their candidates). But it will have the double "benefit" of making it difficult for the public to discover if thousands more Floridians are wrongly purged.

In a close election, a faulty purge list could be decisive.

A handful of news organizations, including CNN and Gannett Co., the First Amendment Foundation of Florida and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., have filed suit seeking access to the voter rolls and purge list. In a state that prides itself on open government and public records, this law flies in the face of the "people's right to know." A judge in Tallahassee is not expected to rule for two weeks.

Although county supervisors of elections have vowed to be cautious and to check the purge lists for errors, it is no guarantee that some Floridians still will not be improperly disenfranchised.

Public scrutiny by the media and government watchdog groups would help ensure the integrity of the electorial process in Florida. Keeping the purge lists secret will only facilitate a cover-up.