State elections chief resigns

Ed Kast, the director of the state Division of Elections, abruptly resigned from his job Monday, just months before the 2004 presidential election.

BY GARY FINEOUT

Florida's elections chief, who just last month ignited controversy by pushing for a new purge of voters identified as felons ineligible to vote, abruptly resigned from his job Monday.

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GROWING SCRUTINY

Kast's decision to step down comes in the midst of increasing scrutiny of the upcoming presidential election in Florida, which decided the presidency by 537 votes four years ago.

In early May, Kast alerted the state's 67 election supervisors that there were nearly 48,000 voters that the state had identified as possible felons ineligible to vote. Kast asked the supervisors to start notifying those on the list, in advance of purging the names, but many election supervisors have delayed so far, saying they remain concerned about the accuracy of the new felon list.

Lists of ineligible voters developed in 1999 and 2000 were riddled with errors and some supervisors ignored the list. Elections supervisors are meeting this week in Key West to discuss how much independent verification they should do before notifying voters that they may be ineligible.

One liberal group, People for the American Way Foundation, tried to use the news of Kast's resignation as a reason for putting the new purge list on hold. The group called on Hood to work more on restoring to the rolls those voters who may have improperly lost their eligibility in 1999 and 2000 -- and that she tell supervisors to delay processing the new felon list.

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