WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Florida faces another debacle in the upcoming presidential election on Nov. 2, with the possibility that thousands of people will be unjustly denied the right to vote, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights heard Thursday.

In a hearing on the illegal disenfranchisement of alleged felons in Florida, commissioners accused state officials of "extraordinary negligence" in drawing up a list of 48,000 people to be purged from voter rolls, most of them because they may once have committed a crime.

"They have engaged in negligence at best and something worse at worst," said Mary Frances Berry, chairperson of the commission, an independent bipartisan body whose members are appointed by the President and Congress. She said the commission would ask the Justice Department to investigate the matter.

"It does seems to me there is a smoking gun here," said commissioner Christopher Edley. "There has been extraordinary negligence in the way the felon purging process has been conducted. ... If it was intentional, this could be a violation of the federal Civil Rights Act."

President Bush won a bitterly disputed election in Florida in 2000 by 537 votes after a month-long battle that was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court. This year's battle between Bush and Democrat John Kerry promises to be equally tight. The president's younger brother, Jeb Bush, is governor of Florida. Last weekend, Gov. Bush said the state would drop the list after newspapers pointed out it included only 61 Hispanics. Hispanics in Florida have generally supported Republicans, while blacks, who made up a disproportionate number on the list, overwhelmingly support Democrats.

After the 2000 election, it emerged that thousands of people, mostly blacks, were improperly denied the right to vote because they mistakenly appeared on a list of ex-felons. Florida is one of seven states that denies former prisoners the right to vote for life unless a clemency commission restores their rights.

This year, the state produced a new list of 48,000 people to be purged from voter rolls. The state kept the list secret until news organizations sued and a judge ordered the state to make it public.

LIST IS "GARBAGE"

Ion Sancho, supervisor of elections in Florida's Leon County, told the commission the list was "garbage" and that Florida was facing another election disaster.

"We recognized the lists were a prescription for disenfranchisement all over again, Sancho said. The list was riddled with inaccuracies, he said, because no one had checked the source data bases to correct errors. For example, it failed to list the alleged felonies those excluded had committed and where and when they were committed. Sam Heyward, a resident of Tallahassee, told the commission he had received
a letter informing him his name was being purged from the voting rolls. He had committed a crime in 1978 but had his voting rights restored in 1986; since then he has voted in every election.

The state said each of Florida's 67 counties would now have to find its own way to purge its voter rolls of felons. The commission heard that many counties, especially those controlled by Republicans, would probably use the state list despite its flaws and that court action was likely.

Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson told the commission he was also concerned about possible voter intimidation. He warned of "police look-alikes" appearing at polling stations in black neighborhoods with video cameras, of police roadblocks near polling stations and other dirty tricks. Additionally, there were serious problems reported with the new touch screen computer voting machines half of Florida's voters would be using. In the March Democratic primary, hundreds of votes that were cast were not recorded. "It is embarrassing to me that we have to go through these kinds of questions," Nelson told the commission.