Voter registration records are public, as are felony criminal records.

But a last-minute insertion into a bill that passed with overwhelming support on the final day of Florida’s legislative session aims to keep the public from seeing felon voting restoration records.

Lawmakers say the amendment protects felons from being singled out and harassed. But the change also makes it difficult, if not impossible, to track the progress of a November constitutional amendment that restored voting rights to more than 1 million felons.

The bill would exempt from public scrutiny the names of felons granted voting rights by the governor and clemency board, which previously had the task of restoring voting rights to felons. The Palm Beach Post used those records in October to report that under Gov. Rick Scott, the clemency board had restored voting rights to the lowest percentage of black felons in 50 years.

The bill also would block scrutiny of records held by local and state election offices “related to a voter registration applicant's or voter's prior felony conviction.”

These records could be used to track the progress of Amendment 4, which gives felons not convicted of murder or sex crimes the right to vote after they serve their time and pay their fines.

“To me, it’s sad. These records would be a way to report on the progress and promise of a constitutional amendment,” said Democratic Rep. Susan Valdes, the only lawmaker in both the House and Senate to vote against the bill. (A second no-vote by Rep. Kamia Brown of Orlando was inaccurately recorded, her aide said.)

“Our open government laws are a point of pride in Florida,” Valdes said. “I don’t want to move backwards.”

There was little discussion after Sen. Jeff Brandes, a Republican from St. Petersburg, slipped the amendment in on the last day of the session.

“It came out of nowhere,” said Barbara Petersen, who tracked the bill for the open government watchdog First Amendment Foundation. “The Legislature doesn’t pay much attention to the consequences, intended or unintended.”

Concerns over harassment

While legislators and voting-rights activists debated a more high-profile Senate bill, SB 7066, that would require felons to complete their sentences and pay court costs, fines and court-ordered restitution before they can register to vote, the public records exemption moved through both chambers without fanfare.

Brandes inserted the amendment into a bill that protects the personal information of 16- and 17-year-olds who pre-register to vote, a popular exemption.

The felon-voter amendment, Brandes said, stemmed from an 11th-hour conversation with Desmond Meade, the head of the nonprofit Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, which championed Amendment 4.

Brandes and Meade said they worried that a public list of felon voters that could be used to expose, embarrass or harass.

“Our concern was about protecting the privacy of returning citizens,” Meade said. “Anything else was an unintended consequence.”

Most felony records, however, are still public through the Florida Department of Corrections. Voter registration rolls are public as well.

Information from the two sources can be combined to track most voters with past felonies, as The Post did last fall and as the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University did this month.

The Brennan Center found that more than 2,100 Florida felons registered to vote between January and March, about 10 times the annual average in the past nine years.

The analysis is incomplete because Department of Corrections records don’t include people with federal convictions, convictions in other states or convictions before 1992.

The last-minute exemption, in House Bill 281, would make a thorough examination nearly impossible.

When registering, voters will be asked to check one of three boxes: one says they’ve never been convicted of a felony, the second says they’ve been convicted but their rights were restored by the state clemency board and the third says their rights are restored by Amendment 4.

The most thorough way to track the progress of Amendment 4 would be to analyze registrations by voters checking that third box. But the bill would make that information private.

Though the Brennan Center uses public records to track voter access, it supports the bill out of the fear that felons would be targeted in partisan attacks, said Myrna Pérez, head of the center’s voting rights project.

“As an academic who looks at these voter files, I know there’s a need for an appropriate balance when there are two goods that cannot be optimized,” Pérez said.

No guarantee of information

Brandes said, though the check-box singling out felons would be private, the number of felons who register and demographic data would be public.

But that’s not necessarily true, said Frank LoMonte, director of the University of Florida’s Brechner Center for Freedom of Information.

State and local agencies don’t have to turn over statistics or demographics if they don’t compile them, LoMonte said.

“If they have it, it's a public record, but there's no guarantee that they will have it, which is why it's essential that journalists and researchers have access to the individual records to create their own compilations,” LoMonte said.

Before Amendment 4 took effect, Florida felons had to appeal to the governor and the Cabinet, acting as the executive clemency board, to have their voting rights restored.

Under the old system, no one could get back their voting rights without a yes vote from Scott. Using partial records covering nearly eight years, The Post found that Scott restored the voting rights of twice as many whites as blacks and three times as many white men as black men.

The Post’s review was limited by Scott’s decision to share the names of those whose rights he restored, but withhold a critical identifier, the date of birth.

Using publicly available information, The Post identified slightly more than half of those whose rights were restored.

The public records bill would exempt the identities of those who had their rights restored under the old system from public scrutiny.

The Legislature sent the bill to Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday. He has until May 29 to sign it into law.