California to use ChoicePoint to purge fellons on voter database

[Amy6627]

The following is from The Pen:

The California Department of General Services is prepared to award a contract to ChoicePoint to develop a statewide criminal database. ChoicePoint is currently under state and federal investigation for security breaches involving stolen information on 145,000 American consumers. According to the Sacramento Bee ("State Looks to ChoicePoint"/4/22/05), ChoicePoint executives sold millions of dollars' worth of company stock before revealing the breach.

In addition, investigative journalist Greg Palast argues ChoicePoint helped fix the 2000 Florida Presidential election by incorrectly listing over 50,000 African Americans and Hispanics as felons barred from voting. PDLA's concern is that under new federal regulations California's Secretary of State is required to create a centralized voter database purged of felons. Where will the SOS access information on felons? From ChoicePoint's software code? Troubling, indeed.

Tell Sacramento you don't want California to do business with ChoicePoint. Please take just a minute to submit the easy one click form at the page just below.

http://www.usalone.com/choicepoint.htm

And if you have your own website and want to do more to support this movement we have even have an action form you can put on your own website and having working in just a minute. Simply download the zip archive below, unzip it and follow the easy instructions

http://www.usalone.com/qnum36_form.zip

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. Ex felons have their rights restored in California

[LynneSin]

3. That's what you think

wait til Choicepoint has their way - hell you could probably be purged just for having a speeding ticket

[dchill]

2. That's insane.

Whether they know ChoicePoint's background & history, or not.

[caligirl]

4. Whats the best way to find all the choicepoint info posted here?

I want to send in an email with lots of data.

[Amy6627]

5. Did you go to the link?

http://www.usalone.com/choicepoint.htm

[caligirl]

6. Florida's 'Disappeared Voters': Disfranchised by the GOP

http://www.gregpalast.com/printerfriendly.cfm?artid=27

In Latin America they might have called them votantes desaparecidos, "disappeared voters." On November 7 tens of thousands of eligible Florida voters were wrongly prevented from casting their ballots--some purged from the voter registries and others blocked from registering in the first instance. Nearly all were Democrats, nearly half of them African-American. The systematic program that disfranchised these legal voters, directed by the offices of Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris, was so quiet, subtle and intricate that if not for George W. Bush's 500-vote eyelash margin of victory, certified by Harris, the chance of the purge's discovery would have been vanishingly small.

The group prevented from voting has few defenders in either party: felons. It has been well reported that Florida denies its nearly half a million former convicts the right to vote. However, the media have completely missed the fact that Florida's own courts have repeatedly told the Governor he may not take away the civil rights of Florida citizens who committed crimes in other states, served their time and had their rights restored by those states.

People from other states who have arrived in Florida with a felony conviction in their past number "clearly over 50,000 and likely over 100,000," says criminal demographics expert Jeffrey Manza of Northwestern University. Manza estimates that 80 percent arrive with voting rights intact, which they do not forfeit by relocating to Florida.

Nevertheless, agencies controlled by Harris and Bush ordered county officials to reject attempts by these eligible voters to register, while, publicly, the governor's office states that it adheres to court rulings not to obstruct these ex-offenders in the exercise of their civil rights. Further, with the aid of a Republican-tied database firm, Harris's office used sophisticated computer programs to hunt those felons eligible to vote and ordered them thrown off the voter registries.


I sent this to the democrats offices

[caligirl]

7. Once again they (BUSHCO) want to strip away

your civil rights using a private firm.

[caligirl]

8. choicepoint info from kos

http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/ChoicePoint

[democracyindanger]

9. please edit your headline

It's completely inaccurate. There are plenty of reasons to hate ChoicePoint without making stuff up.

[slackmaster]

10. Hopefully they mean prople who are in prison or on parole

They're not eligible to vote - http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/elections_faq.htm

I'm very surprised to learn that the state doesn't already have a statewide criminal database. You can contact the Department of Corrections and locate an inmate - http://www.corr.ca.gov/CDC/Inmate_Locator.asp - there has to be some form of database, so why don't they already track parolees?

This is bizarre.

[davidinalameda]

11. done

and sent and I'm in Peralta's district as well

[Technowitch]

12. ChoicePoint considered for criminal database contract, not voter purge

The original post in this thread could be misleading, in that the proposed contract is for the creation of a criminal database.

The stated intent for the contract is not for a purge of felons -- because in California, felons have their voting rights automatically restored upon the completion of their sentence.

There are at this time no federal regulations requiring the purging of felons from voter registration rolls. The voting eligibility for former felons remains a state-regulated matter.

However, folks can still voice whether they feel ChoicePoint should be awarded any sort of contract in California, given allegations of possible wrongdoing in other matters.

-Technowitch