A list including more than 100 convicted felons who cast ballots in recent Knox County elections--despite the loss of their voting rights for their crimes--has been turned over to the District Attorney's office for investigation.
Deputy Administrator of Elections Scott Frith confirmed the names have been turned over for investigation on Wednesday.
Administrator of Elections Greg Mackay broke the news that voting felons had been found, on 10News@5 on Tuesday.
The election commission discovered the mistake after the Tennessee Department of Correction sent county officials a list of felons' Social Security numbers.
"We're required by law that when we get information that someone's been convicted of a felony to remove them from the voting roles, and that's what we've done," said Knox County Elections Administrator Greg Mackay. "So it's unacceptable to us. We're going to make sure we can do what we can to stop felons from voting."
Mackay said 123 of the felons had cast ballots since 2003, but the discovery won't impact the results of any election.
The discovery won't impact the results of any election. In all, Knox County election officials say they've purged more than 200 convicted felons from voter rolls based on the new information.
Mackay said a local system of identifying felons trying to register works well, but the ones found recently had convictions in other jurisdictions.
Other counties clean up
Several surrounding counties are either cleaning their rolls of felons or already have cleaned their rolls.
Blount County - Administrator of Elections Libby Breeding reports Blount County used the same list to purge its rolls several months ago. Breeding didn't have a hard number on how many felons were purged. She said any time the election commission there discovers a felon has been voting, they turn the name over to the district attorney.
Anderson County - Administrator of Elections Mark Stephens reports Anderson County cleared the rolls of any felons before the last city of Clinton election. Since the report came out in July, Stephens said 134 felons were removed.
Stephens also said that several people have been calling Wednesday after seeing the Knox County story, reporting cases of what they believe to be felons voting.
Sevier County - Sevier County has used the state list to clean up the rolls. No numbers on how many have been removed are available at this time.
Roane County - Administrator of Elections Charles Holiway reports the county purged felons from the rolls after the state list came out. In the process, the election commission found 19 convicted felons who had cast at least one vote since their conviction. None would have changed the outcome of an election. All have been turned over to the district attorney.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.