LITTLE ROCK -- Data sent out by the Arkansas secretary of state's office has incorrectly flagged thousands of people to be removed from voter registration lists.
The issue happened when the secretary of state's election division tried to update voter lists with new data to ensure that people who've been convicted of a felony and are still in prison or on parole or probation aren't allowed to vote.
About 4,000 people who've never been convicted of a felony were included on the list and erroneously flagged. Some people who've been convicted of felonies and legally regained the right to vote were also incorrectly flagged.
Brad Cazort, administrator of the Arkansas Crime Information Center's repository division, said they do not have data on whether a person who's been convicted of a felony has regained the right to vote, and that the secretary of state's office never requested that distinction. The center's data did have errors in its system that caused some people who've never been convicted of a felony to be included on the list.
"We have found about 4,000 errors in very old -- 20 or so years ago -- convictions out of municipal court. The judgments we received indicated they were felony convictions and they were entered that way. Municipal courts can't convict persons of a felony. We are working to correct these entries but the entries were made because that's what the court records said," Cazort said.
Once the secretary of state's election division updates county clerk on new felons, clerks will then remove those people from voter lists.
Chris Powell, a spokesman for the secretary, tells the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that it's the responsibility of counties to make sure the information is correct.
"We've offered advice and provided the data, but our office does not remove people" from voter lists, Powell said.
According to Powell, a reset of voter lists is being offered by a county-by-county basis because each county is different.
State Desk on 07/26/2016