With August primaries and November elections looming, state and local elections officials last week appeared to be trying to repair their strained relationship. Recent actions by Florida’s secretary of state and his Division of Elections staff have left county elections supervisors smarting. Last month, Secretary of State Ken Detzner released, then backed away from, the results of a self-survey that graded the 67 supervisors based on items ranging from how quickly they submitted January presidential primary results to how fast they turned in the survey questionnaires. A few weeks later, Detzner’s office released a list of 2,600 names it wanted scrubbed from the voting rolls, contending the voters in question were not citizens. But supervisors have found the list included the names of some U.S.-born voters and naturalized citizens.
So at the end of the supervisors’ three-day annual summer conference last week in Tampa, Division of Elections Director Gisela Salas found herself sounding a conciliatory note. “Communicate, communicate, communicate,” Salas said in her closing speech. “Talking, people understand each other. There’s always a way we can arrive at some sort of compromise. Things are sometimes very difficult to address and to do. But communicating we can totally make things happen.” Two days earlier, the supervisors had voted in favor of continuing to work with Detzner’s office on the survey, the brainchild of Republican Gov. Rick Scott and his advisers.
Full Article: Florida’s election chiefs stung by state moves.