As result, the names of at least 2,120 such individuals were left on a list of allegedly ineligible voters sent by Secretary of State Katherine Harris' department to Florida's 67 county elections supervisors in June 2000. The supervisors were supposed to use the list to purge their voter rolls of dead or ineligible voters. It has since become a focal point of complaints about the election by Democrats and investigations by civil rights organizations. After sending out the incorrect list, state officials didn't inform local elections supervisors about the effect of the 1998 ruling until less than two months before the election, some supervisors said. That was too late to do anything about it, said Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections Pam Iorio.
Laws concerning the voting rights of convicted felons vary from state to state.
Some automatically restore the right as soon as a felon's sentence is completed. Others, including Florida, don't let felons vote or run for office until they appeal to a clemency board and have their rights restored. Prior to 1998, Florida required former felons who moved here to apply to have their civil rights restored even if they already had been restored in the state where they were convicted. But it clearly applied to voting rights as well, state officials said, and meant that Florida should honor other states' pardons and voting rights restorations. Nonetheless, Iorio said, supervisors continued to be told in workshops and informal communications with state officials that the old policy was still in effect.