Ken Detzner wants to counties to purge voter rolls again. After last year’s fuss, however, Florida’s secretary of state is touring the state to explain Project Integrity. Penny Ogg will listen, but Highlands County’s elections supervisor isn’t convinced another state-led purge is necessary. “Through transparency and the statutory due-process protection afforded to every voter, we can ensure the continued integrity of our voter rolls while protecting the voting rights of eligible voters from those who may cast an illegal vote,” Detzner said in a press release last week. “I am going to the roundtable discussion with Secretary Detzner in Orlando on Oct. 7,” Ogg said. “After that meeting, we hope to have better information regarding this issue since we, as supervisors, have not been given details of how they plan to roll out this new phase.” More meetings are scheduled in Panama City, Jacksonville, Sarasota and Fort Lauderdale. Nearly all the 67 elections supervisors scrapped last year’s purge – requested by Gov. Rick Scott – after they discovered the majority of 2,600 voters flagged by Detzner’s office were eligible. Most were minorities or had Hispanic-sounding surnames. Last year’s Florida crossmatched dataset included the names of naturalized citizens and even some who were born in the U.S.
Last year, Ogg spent 10 to 20 hours checking five voters from that list. Although three had no local voting record, she sent letters to all five; four came back undeliverable. She was contacted by the father of the fifth.
“The father said his son was living in Japan,” Ogg said. Joe Campbell, a Democrat who was the election supervisor at the time, didn’t remove any names from the local list.
Ogg, a Republican, agreed. “We need positive proof that they aren’t citizens to remove someone. We need a death certificate or something like that. We don’t just take information over the phone. The same is true of the state list.”
Local supervisors have the sole authority to remove a voter’s name. “Because we’re elected by the people in this county,” Ogg said. “It puts a check on the system. That’s not something that’s done in Tallahassee. It’s done here.”
Despite the “Project Integrity” name, Detzner’s announcement drew fire from Pasco County Supervisor of Elections Brian Corley, who tweeted: “There is no greater ‘voter advocate’ or ‘voter roll integrity advocate’ than a Supervisor of Elections!”
Full Article: Florida wants to scrub voter rolls again.