Voter-database support sought
U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch is calling on Florida election officials to participate in a national database aimed at preventing voter fraud — amidreports thatmore than two dozen people possibly voted twice in the 2014 general election.
TheWestBocaDemocrat penned a letter to Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner on Tuesday, urging him to sign up for the Electronic Registration Information Center, a database used by 15 states and the District of Columbia.
Deutch says the system known as ERIC would improve the accuracy of voter rolls by allowing Florida to compare its list of voters with other states’ at a minimal cost of $50,000.
“We have a record when it comes to our elections that is obviously not onewe are terribly proud of,” he said. “I can’t understand whywewouldn’t join an effort with a nationwide database that can combat problems of people being registered to vote in two states.”
Deutch’s calls come after election supervisors in Broward and Palm Beach counties launched inquiries in January into reports of as many as 32 people voting twice in the 2014 general election — once in Florida and once in theirhomestate upNorth.
It’s a felony to vote in the same federal election twice.
Meredith Beatrice, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of State, said Florida has been unable to participate in ERIC because state law makes some voter information confidential, and it can’t be disclosed to other states.
She added the Secretary of State agrees “this is an important discussion,” and the department “takes voter fraudvery seriously.”
Preventing double voting is difficult because election supervisors don’t have access to an easy-tocheck national database of voters, said Brian Corley, president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections.
The votes in question represented a minuscule number of the more than 850,000 ballots cast in the 2014 general election in Broward and Palm Beach counties.
It took the work of Andrew Ladanowski, a Coral Springs data analyst, to identify those cases of possible double voting. He compared voter rolls from Florida, North Carolina, New Jersey and New York, and alerted election officials to his findings.
IBM and The Pew Charitable Trusts started theERICsystemin2012as away to help election officials check their rolls for accuracy.
The system uses multiple fields to identify possible duplicative voters, including voter lists, vehicle registration lists, national change of address files and Social Security death records, said David Becker, director of election initiatives for The PewCharitable Trusts.
Only election officials can remove voters from the rolls, and the system does not purge anyone, he said.
Private voter data is converted into an indecipherable string of characters so it is unreadable to potential hackers, Becker said.
Voting rights advocates have raised concerns that such systems could disenfranchise voters through false matches, but Deutch said he’s convinced the system has safeguards in place to protect voters.
In 2012, Deutch criticized Gov. Rick Scott for his administration’s purge of suspected noncitizen voters, saying it was being used to remove eligible voters fromthe rolls.