Florida: Statistics show voter fraud is a rare occurrence in Florida | OrlandoSentinel.com

Gov. Rick Scott and his Department of State have been talking about voter fraud in Florida since 2011, shortly after Scott took office. “We need to have fair elections,” Scott said Monday, justifying the identification of more than 2,600 “noncitizens” that the state recently urged county supervisors of elections to purge from the voter rolls. That followed a 2011 legislative rewrite of the election law, again in the name of preventing fraud. “When you go out to vote, you want to make sure that the other individuals that are voting have a right to vote,” Scott added. But notwithstanding the concerns of Scott and Republican legislators, state records show that voter fraud simply hasn’t been a problem for the past decade.

Michigan: Write-In Field for Thaddeus McCotter’s Seat Grows | Roll Call

Another candidate is considering a write-in bid for the GOP nomination to succeed retiring Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R), stoking speculation that Republicans will not be able to settle on a consensus successor. Former state Sen. Nancy Cassis told the Associated Press on Tuesday that she’s interested in running as a write-in on the Aug. 7 GOP primary ballot, joining a burgeoning field of potential candidates. McCotter announced his retirement on Saturday after he failed to make the GOP primary ballot. There were so many errors with his signed petitions that the Michigan attorney general launched a criminal investigation.

New Jersey: Democrats Square Off Over Alleged Voter Caging Effort | TPM

New Jersey Democrats Reps. Bill Pascrell and Steve Rothman — facing one another in a primary election after their districts were merged as a result of redistricting — exchanged heated accusations of dirty politics in the hours before voting got underway on Tuesday. Rothman’s team complained about possible irregularities and had a county elections superintendent impound 2,000 absentee ballots they found suspicious. Late Monday night a judge ruled that decision went too far and ordered the ballots be counted.

South Dakota: Three Counties Test Vote Centers | KELOLAND.com

Voters in three South Dakota counties experienced a newer kind of voting for the primary election. The idea of vote centers is to make casting a ballot more convenient. Voters can stop in at any poling place in the county. A worker will scan their driver’s license and give them the right ballot. “It’s been going very, very well,” Karen Doerr said. Doerr is auditor of Potter County, which is one of three trying out the new system during this primary election. Sully and Hyde counties are the others.

Texas: State Aggressively Purging Voter Registration Files | CBS/DFW

More than 1.5 million Texans could be removed from the state’s list of registered voters if they fail to vote or update their records in consecutive federal elections under an aggressive policy to keep files current. One in 10 voters has already had their registration suspended under the scheme, and for people under 30, the number doubles to one in five, the Houston Chronicle reported Monday. Federal law requires states to keep up-to-date voter records. The Chronicle reports that Texas relies on outdated computer programs and faulty methods to do this, resulting in errors. In fact, 21 percent of voters who received letters saying they would be purged from the rolls were able to prove their validity, according to the newspaper’s analysis of U.S. Election Assistance Commission data. In some counties, the problems are especially severe. For example, in Collin County, 70 percent of the letters were sent to people who were able to prove their right to vote; in Galveston County, about 37 percent of those who received the letters were valid voters and in Bexar County, home to San Antonio, 40 percent were mistakes.

Voting Blogs: Walker, most other Republicans reportedly survive Wisconsin recall elections | The Brad Blog

“It was a great demonstration of democracy, whether you agree or disagree with the outcome,” Huffington Post’s political reporter Howard Fineman told Ed Schultz on MSNBC late tonight, while discussing the results of the historic Wisconsin recall elections. Fineman’s comment is either accurate or it is not. Just as the results reported by the computers across the Badger State are either accurate or not. Who knows? Nobody in WI does, and that’s exactly the problem. The early Exit Poll results had reportedly predicted the race between Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett a virtual tie, leading media to plan for a long night tonight. A second round of Exit Polls results, however, were said to have given Walker a broader lead over Barrett. Even so, we were told, the race based on the Exit Poll data alone was still “too close to call.” That data was either accurate or it was not.

Wisconsin: Lehman declares win, shifting control of Wisconsin Senate | The Journal Times

In a crucial election that swings control of the state Senate to the Democrats, Racine County appeared to have ousted current state Sen. Van Wanggaard Tuesday. Former state Sen. John Lehman, D-Racine leads state incumbent Republican Sen. Van Wanggaard, with 36,255 votes to Wanggaard’s 35,476 votes, according to unofficial results with all precincts reporting. Three Republicans won state Senate races Tuesday in Wisconsin, but with Lehman winning Racine County, the Democrats will take control of the Senate and gain the 17-16 majority. Lehman declared victory shortly before 1 a.m.

Wisconsin: Democrats allege robocalls, ‘dirty tricks’ in recall election | JSOnline

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett’s campaign is warning voters that his opponents might be engaged in “dirty tricks” after some voters said they’ve received robocalls claiming they don’t have to vote Tuesday if they signed the recall petition. The Democratic Party of Milwaukee County also said it is receiving reports of such robocalls and accused supporters of Gov. Scott Walker of placing them. “These tactics aren’t just shady and troubling. They’re un-American and downright criminal,” said Sachin Chheda, Milwaukee County Democratic Party chairman.

Wisconsin: Milwaukee calls in extra poll workers amid heavy turnout | JSOnline

Heavy turnout in Milwaukee led the city Election Commission to call out the reserves Tuesday. Extra poll workers were sent to polling places at Becher Terrace, Bradley Tech High School, Keenan Health Center, Morse Middle School, Rufus King International School Middle Years Campus and Cass Street, 53rd Street, Grantosa and Parkview schools, said Sue Edman, the election commission’s executive director. The backup workers were needed to handle long lines, partly because a significant number of new voters were registering at the polls, Edman said. “We knew things would be busy, but we didn’t know how busy,” Edman said. In some cases, poll workers were shifted from less-crowded polling places to busier ones, Edman said. In other cases, she used poll workers who had agreed to be on call or city administrators who had volunteered to help out, she said.

Wisconsin: Scott Walker Opponents Use Public Shame To Get Out The Vote | Forbes

“Incredibly creepy mail today from the Greater Wisconsin Political Fund,” wrote political blogger Ann Althouse on Friday. The mailing consisted of a list of Althouse’s neighbors, including their addresses and whether or not they had voted in the previous two elections (though not who they voted for); it was sent in advance of Tuesday’s recall election of controversial Wisconsin governorScott Walker. It’s an attempt to shame people into doing their civic duty by publicly slapping them with a “I Didn’t Vote” sticker. The mailing upset some of those who received it. “I think this is invasion of my privacy and every other woman’s privacy. It’s like – here, this is where all the women are,” complained one paranoid voter to the Journal Sentinel. According to the Journal Sentinel, there were two versions of the flier. The one that Althouse received had a generic message  “Who votes is public record! Why do so many people fail to vote? We’ve been talking about the problem for years, but it only seems to get worse. This year, we’re taking a new approach. We’re sending this mailing to you and your neighbors to publicize who does and does not vote.” Other voters, who the political organization presumably trusted were Walker opponents, received a more specific message: “Scott Walker won in 2010 because too many people stayed home! Two years ago, more than half a million Wisconsinites who supported Obama failed to vote in the 2010 election. And that’s how Governor Scott Walker got elected. This year, we’re taking a new approach. We’re sending this mailing to you and your neighbors to publicize who does and does not vote.”

Fiji: Canadian Electronic Voter Registration System arrives | Fiji Times Online

The electronic voting kit for the Electronic Voting Registration (EVR) will arrive into the country next week from Canada. Elections Office logistic team leader Major Isoa Loanakadavu confirmed CODE Corporation in Canada would supply the Biometric Voter Registration System (BVRS) under the Biometric Voter Registration agreement between the corporation and the government of Fiji. “The electronic voting kit will be arriving from Canada three weeks prior to the launch on July 3,” Major Loanakadavu said. Training on the use of the EVR will begin once the BVRS arrives. “Training will be conducted by representatives from CODE Corporation as part of the contract signed during the agreement,” Major Loanakadavu said. “They will conduct training to trainers. These trainers will then be deployed to centres to conduct training on the selected personnel (1118 personnel) prior to the actual deployment for the EVR.”

Georgia (Sakartvelo): Clinton urges Georgia to hold free, fair elections | Voice of Russia

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Georgia’s leaders Tuesday to strengthen their democracy by ensuring that upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections are “free and fair”. Clinton also reaffirmed US support for the territorial integrity of the former Soviet republic that is a strong US ally, calling on Russia to pull back its forces from Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. She delivered her message in meetings with Prime Minister Nika Gilauri and representatives of the country’s opposition parties after arriving late Monday from Armenia as part of her European tour.

Libya: Libya’s delayed elections are hard to call | guardian.co.uk

Libya’s first national elections in more than four decades, scheduled for 19 June, may be delayed for a few weeks. Although the Libyan electoral commission is yet to finalise the list of candidates and prepare the ballot papers, the delay is expected to be short. Holding elections in a country like Libya is no easy task and the electoral commission has done a good job so far. It has worked hard to such an extent that earlier talk of delaying the elections for three to four months seems unreal now. The Libyan people have clearly demonstrated their desire to move forward by registering in large numbers to vote in the coming elections. According to the electoral commission, roughly 80% of the eligible voters have registered. After living in a dictatorship for 42 years, democracy is something new for the Libyan people but they are keenly waiting for the day when they will be able to elect their own representatives and the thought of it is very empowering for them.

Romania: Romania Passes Controversial Election Law | Balkan Insight

Opposition parties and some civic organizations are protesting against a new election law which eliminates a minimum vote threshold for lawmakers and which, it is argued, could allow ultra-nationalists to enter parliament. “It isn’t normal to change an important law less than six months before parliamentary elections,” said Kelemen Hunor, president of UDMR, the main party for ethnic Hungarians in Romania. “Besides, it is expected to give to the current government a hefty majority after the November elections,” he added. Representatives of human rights organizations say the new law “will fail to stop populist and nationalist parties from entering parliament.” The center-right Democrat Liberal Party, PDL, on Wednesday announced plans to take their opposition to the law to the Constitutional Court.

Verified Voting Blog: Rush Holt’s Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2011 (HR 5816)

On May 17, US Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) re-introduced The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2011 (HR 5816), together with 98 co-sponsors. The language in the bill matches that of HR 2894, introduced by Mr. Holt in the 111th Congress in 2009 and would require voter-marked paper ballots in all federal elections. The bill would authorize funding for states to purchase voting equipment, require hand-counted audits of electronic vote tallies, and reform the process of testing voting equipment. The language of HR 5816 is also included as Title VI of the omnibus election reform bill, The Voter Empowerment Act (HR 5799.) It was referred to the Subcommittee on Election of the Committee on House Administration and the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

As with earlier versions of Mr. Holt’s legislation, Verified Voting is proud to endorse HR 5816. Verified Voting President Pamela Smith notes “this bill provides a baseline standard for our voting systems that’s so essential the voter confidence — not just that the outcome is correct, but that it actually means something when they take the time to go and vote.”  Reflecting the added urgency of Mr. Holt’s legislation since it was first introduced, Smith adds “the funding called for in this bill to support the movement to more resilient and reliable voting systems is urgently needed in many states and counties where voting systems are aging rapidly and need to be replaced.”

In 2010, over 60 percent of the nation’s voters cast their votes on paper ballots that were read by electronic scanning devices. In the last several years, voter-marked paper ballots have become the most popular means of providing a paper record of each vote. “Paper trail” printers attached to voting machines are an alternative method of providing a paper record, but have reliability problems, such as printer jams. They are cumbersome to recount, raise privacy concerns because they store all votes on a continuous roll, and go unchecked by significant numbers of voters. Three-fourths of the states have adopted voting systems that provide some form of voter-verifiable paper record, but a significant number still use electronic voting machines that offer no voter-verifiable backup. In at least ten states in the 2012 elections, most or all of the votes will be cast on paperless electronic voting systems. These include Indiana, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, as well as Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Texas.

Wisconsin: The cringe-worthy Wisconsin recall recount scenario | Politico.com

Politico’s Robin Bravender has a piece on the home page today about the specter of a recount in today’s Wisconsin recall election, a cringe-worthy prospect given the state’s already intensely polarized environment. The idea that the recall might still be unsettled at the end of the evening, or that it might go to overtime, is one that’s largely been advanced in recent days by Democrats — they have an obvious interest in countering turnout-depressing polling suggesting that GOP Gov. Scott Walker has the race in the bag. But the notion of a contest that goes to a recount isn’t really all that far-fetched, as Robin notes.

Wisconsin: Wisconsin mailings that list voting records set off some neighbors | JSOnline

Jane Boutan thought it was an invasion of privacy. Corrine Greuling worried about her safety. Viola Miller wondered if it could be used to steal her vote. They and others got upset after the Greater Wisconsin Political Fund mailed fliers over the weekend listing people’s names, addresses and whether they voted in the November 2008 and 2010 elections, as well as the same information for a dozen of their neighbors. “What am I supposed to do? Go shame my neighbor? Whether my neighbor voted or not is none of my business,” said Boutan, who lives in Milwaukee’s Sherman Park neighborhood. The fliers arrived in mailboxes over the weekend. The Greater Wisconsin Political Fund, which is affiliated with the Greater Wisconsin Committee, is a liberal group that has run ads against Republican Gov. Scott Walker to help Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett in Tuesday’s recall election. The group did not respond to voicemail and email messages Monday afternoon, so the scope and cost of the effort was not known. But the Journal Sentinel heard from people across the metro area, from Oak Creek to Glendale, and Waukesha to Wauwatosa. Addressed to registered voters, the fliers say: “Who votes is public record! Why do so many people fail to vote? We’ve been talking about the problem for years, but it only seems to get worse. This year, we’re taking a new approach. We’re sending this mailing to you and your neighbors to publicize who does and does not vote.”

Wisconsin: Wisconsin Walker recall: Democrats prep for recall recount | Politico.com

Brace yourself: Wisconsin Democrats say they are preparing for the event that the hotly contested recall race could drag on for weeks, or even longer. Floating the prospect of a recount is, of course, a message that bolsters the party’s claims that the race is closer than people think and that it will go down to the wire — despite polls showing Walker with the lead. Yet there’s reason a recount can’t be so easily dismissed. Walker can’t seem to break his 50 percent ceiling of support among Wisconsin voters. His ballot support has hovered at either 50 percent or 49 percent in 12 of the 14 polls released since early May, and recent polls show the race tightening in the final stretch. “We’re very much anticipating that there’s a chance that we could be in a recount scenario,” said Mike Tate, chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. He said the party will have more than 440 lawyers in the field on Tuesday “doing election protection activities but also tasked with recount preparation, making sure that we know where absentee ballots are at, making sure that we have a strong handle on what’s happening out there.”

Wisconsin: All eyes on Wisconsin governor’s recall election | Reuters

Wisconsin voters will decide on Tuesday whether to throw Governor Scott Walker out of office in a rare recall election forced by opponents of the Republican’s controversial effort to curb collective bargaining for most unionized government workers. The rematch with Milwaukee’s Democratic Mayor Tom Barrett, who Walker defeated in a Republican sweep of the state in 2010, is the end-game of six months of bitter fighting in the Midwestern Rust Belt state over the union restrictions Walker proposed and enacted. The recall election in closely divided Wisconsin, which helped elect Democrat Barack Obama as president in 2008, is seen as a dress rehearsal for the 2012 U.S. presidential election in November. The vote is also viewed as a test of strength between organized labor and conservative opponents, both of whom have poured money and effort into the contest.

The Voting News Daily: Battles Over Voter ID Laws Intensify, When Did Conservatives Change Their Mind About Campaign Finance Disclosure?

National: Battles Over Voter ID Laws Intensify | NPR As both parties turn to the general election, and the potentially pivotal role of minority voters, battles over voter identification and other new state election laws are intensifying. Voting rights groups, who say the new laws discriminate against minority voters, won a key victory Thursday with a…

National: Battles Over Voter ID Laws Intensify | NPR

As both parties turn to the general election, and the potentially pivotal role of minority voters, battles over voter identification and other new state election laws are intensifying. Voting rights groups, who say the new laws discriminate against minority voters, won a key victory Thursday with a federal judge’s decision to strike down portions of a Florida law that tightened rules for third-party groups that register voters. In his opinion, U.S. District Court Judge Robert L. Hinkle said:

“Together speech and voting are constitutional rights of special significance; they are the rights most protective of all others, joined in this respect by the ability to vindicate one’s rights in a federal court. …[W]hen a plaintiff loses an opportunity to register a voter, the opportunity is gone forever … And allowing responsible organizations to conduct voter-registration drives — thus making it easier for citizens to register and vote — promotes democracy.”

Editorials: When Did Conservatives Change Their Mind About Campaign Finance Disclosure? | Mark Schmitt/The New Republic

A decade ago, when Congress was debating the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, better known as McCain-Feingold, the conservative alternative to its modest tightening of regulations on political spending bore the wonderful name DeLay-Doolittle. The name represented not just the two primary sponsors—then-Reps. Tom DeLay and John Doolittle—but also what the bill would do, or not. As an alternative to restrictions on soft money and corporate spending, DeLay and Doolittle proposed to lift all existing regulations on political contributions, and replace them with a regime of immediate and complete disclosure on the Internet. DeLay and Doolittle faced two problems, however. First, its supporters soon disappeared from Congress under murky circumstances. DeLay was indicted on campaign-finance related charges in 2006 and resigned. Doolittle, deeply implicated in the Jack Abramoff scandal, left Congress in 2007. The third major supporter of the bill, Rep. Bob Ney, served 17 months in prison connected to the Jack Abramoff scandal. The second problem with DeLay and Doolittle was that its supporters didn’t mean a word of it. They didn’t want to disclose their donors and outside backers any more than they wanted to limit them—after all, they went to great lengths to hide information such as their dealings with Abramoff. It was only a slick way of changing the subject.

National: Supreme Court won’t hear Siegelman appeal | The Associated Press

The Supreme Court will not take another look at the bribery conviction of former Ala. Gov. Don Siegelman. The high court on Monday turned away Siegelman’s appeal of his 2006 convictions. Siegelman was convicted of selling a seat on a hospital regulatory board to former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy in exchange for $500,000 in donations to Siegelman’s 1999 campaign to establish a state lottery.

Voting Blogs: Campaign donations convictions stand | SCOTUSblog

Staying out of the increasingly controversial use of the criminal law to police political campaign donations, the Supreme Court chose on Monday to leave undisturbed the convictions of an ex-governor and a campaign contributor who sought to test the issue anew.   The action had no direct connection to the recent case of the failed criminal prosecution of former presidential candidate John Edwards, but that case has added to the legal controversy.  The Court took no action Monday on any of the seven new cases filed by Guantanamo Bay prisoners, leaving those to be rescheduled. The Court granted review of one new case, Bailey v. United States (docket 11-770), that will clarify the authority of police to detain a suspect while they are waiting to carry out a search warrant.   The specific issue is whether police may hold a suspect who has left the place where a search is to be carried out, and is then kept in custody until the search is completed.  Federal and state courts are split on the issue, which involves the interpretation of the Supreme Court’s 1981 decision in Michigan v. Summers.

California: Voters see election reforms firsthand as they prepare to cast primary ballots | The Republic

California voters will confront a longer ballot with more choices as they head to the polls Tuesday for the first statewide primary featuring sweeping voter-approved election reforms.  A new top-two primary system and redrawn legislative and congressional districts are intended to blunt the influence of the two main political parties and lead to more competitive races involving more moderate candidates. Tuesday’s voting will test those assumptions. For the first time, an independent panel of citizens drew the boundaries for revamped legislative and congressional districts, and only the top two vote-getters in each race will advance to the November ballot, regardless of their political party. That’s likely to create several hard-fought and expensive contests in the fall, including some that feature members of the same party and independents.

Voting Blogs: Florida’s Unsung Election Heroes | Brennan Center for Justice

Local election administrators form the front line in protecting voters from disenfranchisement. It was certainly welcome news that the Department of Justice sent a letter last week to Florida’s Secretary of State Ken Detzner to remind him of federal law prohibiting the Sunshine State from purging the voter rolls so close to an election. Voters and the courts also make a tremendous difference in the fight against state policies that could make it harder formillions of eligible Americans to vote. After seeing a wave of restrictive voting laws sweep the nation in the last year or so — the worst since the Jim Crow era — push back against these new but regressive policies is occurring across the country, from Maine to Texas andWisconsin to South Carolina. The quiet heroes in the Florida purge story, however, may be those fastidious local supervisors of elections who have committed themselves to protecting voters, following federal law, and publicly stating their opposition to sloppy purge practices. In mid-May, Detzner issued a press release announcing that he had a list of 182,000 people who were on the voter rolls, but ineligible to vote because they were non-citizens. Reports of similar lists for allegedly deceased voters and voters with criminal convictions soon surfaced. There is no dispute that our voter registration lists should be clean and accurate. However, the methodological problems with these types of purges and the proximity to the August primary generated abundant criticism. The almost immediate influx of stories of eligible Americans being incorrectly identified as non-citizens lent fuel to the fire, and many local supervisors of elections publicly criticized the planned purge.

Florida: ‘Phantom’ votes raise doubts for November election in Florida | Palm Beach Post

Almost half of Florida’s voters will have their ballots counted this November by machines that can malfunction in as little as two hours and start adding votes. A New York study found that the precinct-based vote counter added votes in some races on a ballot, which can invalidate some or all of the votes. Although not used in Palm Beach County, Election Systems & Software’s DS200 scanner will count votes in some of the most populous counties in Florida, including Miami-Dade, Broward and Orange. State elections officials stand behind the scanner, which they say has been thoroughly tested. Even so, the manufacturer issued a nationwide bulletin warning that the scanner needs to be carefully cleaned to avoid adding “phantom” votes.

Voting Blogs: Injunction in Florida Voter Registration Case Speaks to Clarity in Election Legislation | Election Academy

On May 31, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle issued a preliminary injunction in the case of League of Women Voters of Florida et al v. Browning et al, a case challenging Florida’s new voter registration law. In particular, the League and other plaintiffs were concerned about the requirement that voter registration groups must submit applications within 48 hours of the voter’s completion of the form – or face the prospect of fines. The judge’s order halts enforcement of the law (and its supporting rule) pending a full trial on the merits. Judge Hinkle’s order recognizes the interests of the state in enacting the law:

The state has a substantial interest in seeing that voter-registration applications are promptly turned in to an appropriate voter-registration office. Applications that are not promptly turned in may be lost or forgotten or otherwise mishandled. Just as a prudent law-enforcement officer promptly delivers evidence to the evidence room, a prudent voter-registration organization promptly delivers voter-registration applications to the voter-registration office. And applicationsthat are held and delivered to a voter-registration officeen masse, especially near a voter-registration deadline, impose an unnecessary burden on voter-registration officials. The state’s interests are easily sufficient to uphold a requirement for reasonably prompt delivery of applications. (pp.7-8)

Florida: State will defy order to stop purging voter list amid calls of ‘suppression’ | guardian.co.uk

Florida says it will defy an order from the US justice department to stop purging its voter roll of people the state claims may not be American citizens. The justice department has warned that the practice, which critics describe as “voter suppression” by Florida’s Republican administration aimed at stripping the ballot from people more likely to support Democrats, is illegal under federal laws. It has given the state until Wednesday to agree to halt the purge, something officials in Florida say they have no intention of doing. Federal authorities say that the state is obliged to get justice department approval for changes to its voting laws under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was introduced to end practices that prevented African Americans from exercising their democratic right in many southern states. The justice department also said that the purge appears to violate a federal law stopping voters being removed from the rolls less than 90 days before an election. Florida holds primaries in mid-August. But Chris Cate, a spokesman for the Florida secretary of state, said the purge will continue.

Editorials: Florida voters purge: A ham-handed solution to a problem that doesn’t exist | Orlando Sentinel

Bill Internicola had to show his papers. He received a letter last month from the Broward County, Fla., Supervisor of Elections informing him the office had “information from the state of Florida that you are not a United States citizen; however, you are registered to vote.” So Internicola had to prove he is an American. He sent the county a copy of his Army discharge papers. Internicola is 91 years old. He was born in Brooklyn. He is a veteran of the Second World War. He earned a Bronze Star for his part in the Battle of the Bulge. Yet he was required to prove to a county functionary that he is entitled to vote in an American election. We learn from reporter Amy Sherman’s story last week in The Miami Herald that this is part of a campaign by Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, to weed non-citizens off the rolls of the state’s voters. Initially, Florida claimed 180,000 were possible non-citizens. That number was eventually whittled way down to about 2,600 people. In Miami-Dade County, where the largest number of them live, 385 have been verified as citizens. Ten – 10! – have admitted they are ineligible or asked to be removed from the rolls. The Herald recently analyzed the list and found it dominated by Democrats, independents and Hispanics. Republicans and non-Hispanic whites were least likely to have their voting rights challenged.