Rick Scott May Add More Focus on Felons Illegally Registered to Vote

Gov. Rick Scott will soon be sending questions to state elections officials after several former felons seeking to have their civil rights restored admitted Thursday they had registered to vote and cast ballots in recent elections.

“There must be a breakdown between the information that is provided to the supervisors of elections, I’m going to find out why that continues to happen,” Scott said Thursday after a more than five-hour clemency session by the state Cabinet.

Scott who continues to face resistance from federal officials over his efforts to remove non-U.S. citizens from the list of registered voters across Florida, said the issue of ex-felons illegally on the voter rolls has been an issue since the first clemency board hearing he sat on last year.

On Thursday, one of the former felons applying for clemency said he applied in 2005 to have his civil rights restored thinking the process in Florida was still automatic. Several years later, when updating his driver’s license, he was asked if he wanted to register to vote, filled out the form and was sent a voter registration card and cast a ballot in 2010.

Only when contacted by a parole officer seven months ago did he find out his rights had yet to be restored, the man said.