Arizona: Supreme Court’s Split decision Keeps Issue Alive for November | Roll Call

The Supreme Court’s split decision on Arizona’s immigration law gave President Barack Obama an important legal victory Monday while upholding just enough of the statute to keep the issue alive as he pursues Latino voters in advance of the November election. Indeed, the president’s advantage on the issue was clear given that top Republicans either declined to respond or, in the case of presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, issued statements that vaguely supported states rights without commenting on the specifics of the tough Arizona law. The controversial “papers please” section of the law requiring police officers to try to ascertain the immigration status of people they suspect to be illegal immigrants was upheld, while the rest of the law adding state criminal penalties for immigration violations was gutted in a 5-3 ruling written by Justice Anthony Kennedy. With the states constrained, the onus is squarely on Congress to fix the nation’s immigration system, but nothing beyond partisan posturing is likely on that front before November.

Florida: State won’t release larger list of possible noncitizen voters | Tampa Bay Times

Gov. Rick Scott insists Florida’s voter rolls must be scrubbed carefully to remove any non-U.S. citizens, but his administration is keeping secret a list of more than 180,000 voters whose citizenship may be in question. Scott’s elections agency is refusing numerous requests from voter advocacy groups and news outlets to release the list, months after the state released an initial list targeting 2,625 potential noncitizens. Many people on the first list turned out to be citizens. The larger list has the potential to cause a bigger political controversy than the smaller one. “I want to be very careful,” said Scott’s chief elections official, Secretary of State Ken Detzner. “It’s individuals’ names on there, and I want to make sure that people are treated respectfully. I want to be abundantly cautious about that.”

Iowa: Few Iowa felons pursue voting rights | Fox News

Republican Gov. Terry Branstad has made Iowa one of the most difficult states in the nation for felons to vote, with an executive order he issued last year already having disenfranchised thousands of people, a review by The Associated Press shows. On the day he took office, Branstad signed an order reversing a six-year policy started under Democrat Tom Vilsack in which felons automatically regained their voting rights once they were discharged from state supervision. The move flew in the face of a nationwide trend to make voting easier for felons, making Iowa one of four states where felons must apply to the governor to have voting rights restored. Branstad’s new process requires applicants to submit a credit report, a provision critics call inappropriate and unique among states. Since then, 8,000 felons in Iowa have finished their prison sentences or been released from community supervision, but less than a dozen have successfully navigated the process of applying to get their citizenship rights back, according to public records obtained by the AP. Branstad’s office has denied a handful of others because of incomplete paperwork or unpaid court costs.

Arizona: Citizenship mandate challenged | SCOTUSblog

Challengers to Arizona’s eight-year-old mandate that voters must prove that they are U.S. citizens before they may register to go to the polls argued Monday that the state has not offered any evidence that the requirement is necessary to prevent fraud in elections.   Urging the Supreme Court to leave undisturbed a Ninth Circuit Court decision striking down the citizenship rule, the opponents of Arizona’s “Proposition 200″ contended that a delay of that ruling will interfere with voting in this year’s elections and drive potential voters away from the polls.  Two responses to Arizona’s plea for postponement can be read here and here. The state’s voters approved the citizenship mandate in 2004, and its enactment has led to a continuing courthouse battle that has been to the Supreme Court once before, and even led to an earlier Ninth Circuit ruling against the requirement by retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, sitting temporarily as a federal appeals court judge.  Indeed, her name was invoked by the challengers as they sought to head off Arizona’s stay application (11A1189).

Editorials: Voter Suppression Returns: Voting rights and partisan practices | Alexandar Keyssar/Harvard Magazine

The 2012 election campaign—for Congress as well as the presidency—promises to be bitterly fought, even nasty. Leaders of both major parties, and their core constituents, believe that the stakes are exceptionally high; neither party has much trust in the goodwill or good intentions of the other; and, thanks in part to the Supreme Court, money will be flowing in torrents, some of it from undisclosed sources and much of it available for negative campaigning. This also promises to be a close election—which is why a great deal of attention is being paid to an array of recently passed, and pending, state laws that could prevent hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of eligible voters from casting ballots. Several states, including Florida (once again, a battleground), have effectively closed down registration drives by organizations like the League of Women Voters, which have traditionally helped to register new voters; some states are shortening early-voting periods or prohibiting voting on the Sunday before election day; several are insisting that registrants provide documentary proof of their citizenship. Most importantly—and most visibly—roughly two dozen states have significantly tightened their identification rules for voting since 2003, and the pace of change has accelerated rapidly in the last two years. Ten states have now passed laws demanding that voters possess a current government-issued photo ID, and several others have enacted measures slightly less strict. A few more may take similar steps before November—although legal challenges could keep some of the laws from taking effect.

Arizona: Voter-ID Law Gets Temporary Pass From U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy | Phoenix News

In April, the U.S. Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a portion of Arizona’s voter-approved voter-ID law, intended to keep non-citizens from voting. Because of that ruling, Arizona was supposed to stop enforcing the law. But a new order by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy permits the law to go into effect — for the time being. Kennedy’s order comes in response to Arizona Solictor General David Cole’s motion on Wednesday that sought a stay to the Ninth Circuit’s ruling.

Florida: Voter purge explained | The Washington Post

Laws designed to clamp down on voter fraud have been causing controversy all over the country. But in Florida, an attempt sparked by Gov. Rick Scott (R) to remove non-citizens from the voter rolls has become particularly heated, devolving into dueling lawsuits, with officials refusing to carry out directives from the secretary of state. The Department of Justice is suing the state over the purge. Florida is suing the Department of Homeland Security. What happened? As the Miami Herald reported, Scott became interested in the number of non-citizen voters early in his tenure. The state wanted to use the Department of Homeland Security‘s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, but federal officials denied access. Instead, the state elections board relied on the information from the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles to determine citizenship. Then-Secretary of State Kurt Browning abandoned the effort, saying the data was too flawed. (For example, some people gain citizenship after getting a driver’s license. Some names on the list were simply there by mistake.)

Editorials: Fannie Lou Who? Why Voting Rights Still Matter | Colorlines

I’m poring over notes created the last few weeks on my laptop, in my notebook, and on scraps of paper, in order to explain why this blog exists. In short, Voting Rights 2012 is a collaborative effort between Colorlines.com and The Nation, to report on voter suppression. But that doesn’t explain why this blog exists. Brentin Mock will be writing the bigger picture story, looking at broader national trends from voter ID to voter suppression. Meanwhile, I’ll be augmenting with more of the day-to-day developments, as well working with community journalists, who will be our eyes and ears, since our little team can’t be everywhere at once. Now that I have it down in a short paragraph, it sounds simple enough. But it hardly begins to answer why we’re really here, or why anyone should want to follow our work. Many readers of The Nation, who follow electoral trends and possess a tendency towards protecting voting rights, might wonder why their coveted magazine (and, increasingly, their online go-to site for political analysis) felt the need to pair up with a site that focuses on racial justice. Meanwhile, some Colorlines.com readers, who may be disenchanted with politics four years after a historic election that resulted in fewer gains for people of color than many hoped for, might wonder why their favorite daily news site is concerned with voting rights—an issue that seemingly only affirms the establishment (as a dear friend recently posted on Facebook, “the republicrats will win no matter what.”) And then, there’s Brentin and I, pressed to write for two intelligent yet not always overlapping audiences, and convince both that what we’re reporting is relevant.

Arizona: State allowed to keep law that demands proof of citizenship for voter registration | East Valley Tribune

Arizona can continue to demand proof of citizenship before registering voters, at least for the time being.
In a brief order Thursday, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy blocked a ruling against the state from taking effect as scheduled Friday. Instead, he directed those who successfully challenged the requirement to file legal papers by the end of the day Monday explaining why the April decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals should be upheld. It does not mean the high court intends to overturn the ruling — or even from preventing it from taking effect while the state seeks review. But it does mean that at least one justice thinks the issue is significant enough to require an immediate look by him and his colleagues.

Arizona: Delay in Arizona election case | SCOTUSblog

Justice Kennedy has issued a temporary order delaying the Ninth Circuit Court’s ruling, at least until further briefs are filed in the case.  The Circuit Court mandate was due to be issued tomorrow, but now will be delayed until at least next Wednesday afternoon.  The challengers to the Arizona citizenship proof requirement are to file a brief by Monday afternoon, with a state reply due by noon Wednesday.   Earlier today, this post was updated to provide a link to the application, here. Arizona state officials asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to allow election officials there to demand that all voters show proof of citizenship before they may register to vote   The divided en banc Ninth Circuit Court ruled in April that the citizenship proof requirement conflicts with a 1993 federal law passed to make it easier for individuals to sign up to vote.  The state took its plea for a delay of that ruling, for the duration of this year’s election season, to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who has the option of acting alone or referring the issue to his eight colleagues.  The application (11A1189) was filed in Arizona v. Gonzalez, et al.  The en banc Ninth Circuit, over three judges’ dissents, had denied a stay last week.

Florida: Gov. Scott: DOJ ‘stonewalling’ attempt to protect voting rights | The Hill

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) called his determination to remove ineligible voters from Florida’s voting rolls “a no-brainer” on Tuesday, charging the administration with “stonewalling” the attempt. “We’re sitting here trying to watch how we spend our money, pay down our debt, do the right things for the citizens of our state, and the federal government tells us, ‘Oh, no, you can’t do the right thing for our citizens and we’re going to sue you,’ ” Scott said on Fox News. “It doesn’t make sense.” Scott announced on Monday that Florida is suing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in order to move forward, in response to the Department of Justice (DOJ) filing a suit against the state over actions taken for the purging attempt. “This is protecting the rights of U.S. citizens and not diluting their vote by non-U.S. citizens,” Scott said. “When non-U.S. citizens register and vote, it is illegal, it is a crime.” Florida began purging county voting rolls this year in order to eliminate ineligible voters ahead of what will likely be a hotly contested election, but stopped due to the administration’s protests.

Editorials: Florida’s Voter Harassment Campaign | Bloomberg

Florida is locked in battle with the U.S. Justice Department over the state’s efforts to scrub its voter rolls. At Republican Governor Rick Scott’s direction, the state cross-referenced driver’s licenses and voter registrations to compile a list of more than 180,000 Floridians it said were suspect. It then sent to county election supervisors a first cut of more than 2,600 registrants. They were to be notified by certified mail and given 30 days to prove their citizenship before being stricken from the rolls and barred from voting this fall. An analysis by the Miami Herald found the vast majority were, in fact, citizens (including 91-year-old Bill Internicola, a World War II veteran born in New York who was none too happy about his civic demotion). Last week, a federal court in Tallahassee blocked the state from imposing new restrictions on voter registration, including a law requiring registration forms be submitted to state officials within 48 hours. The law previously had allowed 10 days for submissions. Florida was never able to explain why a two-day rush was suddenly necessary, particularly when voter registration is often conducted by volunteers.

Editorials: Interfering with voting rights | The Washington Post

Florida is one of a number of states to have recently imposed ill-considered restrictions on voting rights, as it interferes with efforts to register new voters and seeks to purge non-citizens from state voting rolls. State officials, acting at the behest of Gov. Rick Scott (R), have scoured driver’s license and other records to identify non-citizens and have forwarded a list of 2,600 supposedly ineligible voters to local elections officials for further action. Chris Cate, a Florida Division of Elections spokesman, asserted that the division has “a duty under both state and federal laws to ensure that Florida’s voter registration rolls are current and accurate.” But the state also has a duty to ensure that those legally entitled to vote are not unjustly prevented from doing so. The last thing the state needs is another election tainted by questions of fairness.

Florida: Florida Stops Search for Ineligible Voters on List | NYTimes.com

Florida’s attempt to purge ineligible voters from its rolls has been halted, at least for now. “We felt the information wasn’t credible and reliable,” said Vicki Davis, president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections. “Too many voters on the state’s list turned out to actually be citizens.” That decision dealt a major setback to state leaders, including Gov. Rick Scott, who have pledged to identify ineligible voters before state primary elections in August. The United States Department of Justice has ordered Florida to stop the purge, saying states cannot remove voters from their rolls within 90 days of an election.

Florida: Florida county elections supervisors won’t resume voter purge | MiamiHerald.com

Florida’s noncitizen voter purge looks like it’s all but over. The 67 county elections supervisors — who have final say over voter purges —are not moving forward with the purge for now because nearly all of them don’t trust the accuracy of a list of nearly 2,700 potential noncitizens identified by the state’s elections office.The U.S. Department of Justice has ordered the state to stop the purge. “We’re just not going to do this,” said Leon County’s elections supervisor, Ion Sancho, one of the most outspoken of his peers. “I’ve talked to many of the other supervisors and they agree. The list is bad. And this is illegal.” So far, more than 500 have been identified as citizens and lawful voters on the voter rolls. About 40 people statewide have been identified as noncitizens. At least four might have voted and could be guilty of a third-degree felony. The eligibility of about 2,000 have not been identified one way or the other.

Florida: Voter Purge In Limbo As County Officials Await State Response To DOJ | TPM

An association of Florida elections supervisors has recommended that members hold off on purging voter rolls until the state settles its dispute with the Justice Department over whether the action is legal. Based “upon the previous issues that have been presented concerning the list, as well as the fact that the Department has indicated its intent to take further actions to review its list to determine its validity,” Ron Labasky of Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections wrote in a memo that his recommendation was that Supervisors of Elections “cease any further action until the issues were raised by the Department of Justice are resolved between the parties or by a Court.” DOJ asked Florida to say by Wednesday whether they would cease trying to purge their voter list. Justice Department officials contended that federal law doesn’t allow voters to be removed from the polls within 90 days of an election and that changes to the process Florida uses to remove voters must be cleared under the Voting Rights Act.

Florida: Justice Department Demands Florida Stop Purging Voter Rolls | TPM

The Justice Department sent a letter to Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner Thursday evening demanding the state cease purging its voting rolls because the process it is using has not been cleared under the Voting Rights Act. DOJ also said that Florida’s voter roll purge violated the National Voter Registration Act, which stipulates that voter roll maintenance should have ceased 90 days before an election, which given Florida’s August 14 primary, meant May 16. Five of Florida’s counties are subject to the Voting Rights Act, but the state never sought permission from either the Justice Department or a federal court to implement its voter roll maintenance program. Florida officials said they were trying to remove non-citizens from the voting rolls, but a flawed process led to several U.S. citizens being asked to prove their citizenship status or be kicked off the rolls.

National: Voting rights gains of ‘60s in jeopardy, Attorney General Eric Holder says | The Sacramento Bee

Attorney General Eric Holder told African-American clergy leaders Wednesday that a wave of new state laws on voting and legal challenges to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 may jeopardize rights they helped fight for in the civil rights era. “Despite our nation’s long tradition of extending voting rights . . . a growing number of our fellow citizens are worried about the same disparities, divisions and problems that – nearly five decades ago – so many fought to address,” Holder told a meeting of the Conference of National Black Churches convened by the Congressional Black Caucus to discuss the laws. “In my travels across the country, I’ve heard a consistent drumbeat of concern from citizens, who – often for the first time in their lives – now have reason to believe that we are failing to live up to one of our nation’s most noble ideals. And some of the achievements that defined the civil rights movement now hang in the balance.” Holder spoke in response to an array of new voting measures enacted by several mostly Republican state governments that proponents say are needed to protect against voter fraud and to prevent illegal immigrants from voting. However, the mostly Democratic black caucus – along with several civil rights, voting rights and civil liberties groups – contends that the laws are really efforts to suppress the votes of minorities and others.

Florida: Broward Supervisor of Elections: Gov. Scott’s Voter Purge Will Remove Eligible Voters From Rolls | Think Progress

According to the Broward County Supervisor of Elections, eligible voters will be removed from the voting rolls as a result of the massive voter purge ordered by Governor Rick Scott. “It will happen,” Mary Cooney, a spokeswoman for the Broward CouPress Thisnty Supervisor of Elections, told ThinkProgress. Late last year, Governor Scott ordered his Secretary of State, Kurt Browning to “to identify and remove non-U.S. citizens from the voter rolls.” Browning could not get access to reliable citizenship data. So Scott urged election officials to identify non-U.S. citizens by comparing data from the state motor vehicle administration with the voting file.

Florida: Voting rights groups ask Scott to stop non-citizen voter purge | Palm Beach Post

A coalition of voting rights groups is asking Gov. Rick Scott to stop a statewide effort to purge thousands of potential non-citzens from the voting rolls, and U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Boca Raton, also plans to ask the governor to stop the scrub. Lawyers for the groups said in a letter to Secretary of StateKen Detzner that the voting purge is in violation of the National Voting Rights Act which prohibits systematic purging of the voter rolls 90 days prior to a general election. The purge effort falls within that 90-day prohibition because of Florida’s Aug. 14 primary. Last month, Detzner sent a list of more than 2,600 potentially ineligible voters to the state’s 67 elections supervisors flagged as potentially ineligible by matching driver’s license and voting records. But the list was riddled with errors and included some voters who were born in the U.S. and others who had become citizens since getting their driver’s licenses or state-issued ID cards. Detzner’s office then went to work on scrubbing a list of up to 180,000 flagged voters whose citizenship is in question.

Ohio: Republicans want to disallow ballots with errors caused by poll workers | Slate Magazine

So much ink has been spilled on how vote suppression will affect the 2012 presidential election, one hesitates to write another word. Ari Berman has done terrific work uncovering the ways in which the new voting laws have aimed at suppressing the votes of elderly, minority, student, and other voters—particularly in swing states—who tend to vote for Democratic candidates. Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center for Justice has an indispensible primer on the 22 new laws and two executive actions that will severely restrict voting in 17 states in November. These laws, often modeled on draft legislation from the American Legislative Exchange Council, a consortium of conservative state legislators, will have the effect of disenfranchising millions of voters, all in order to address a vote fraud “epidemic” that should be filed somewhere between the Loch Ness Monster and the Tooth Fairy in the annals of modern fairy tales. As Weiser notes, none of this is casual or accidental: “If you want to find another period in which this many new laws were passed restricting voting, you have to go back more than a century—to the post-Reconstruction era, when Southern states passed a host of Jim Crow voting laws and Northern states targeted immigrants and the poor.” Whether it’s onerous (and expensive) voter ID rules that will render as many as 10 percent of Americans ineligible to vote, proof of citizenship measures, restricting registration drives,cancellation of Sunday voting, or claims that voting should be a privilege as opposed to a right, efforts to discount and discredit the vote have grown bolder in recent years, despite vanishingly rare claims of actual vote fraud. The sole objective appears to be ensuring that fewer Americans vote in 2012 than voted in 2008. But as strange as the reasons to purge certain votes have been around the nation, things have grown even stranger in recent weeks in Ohio, where GOP lawmakers have gone after not only voters but the federal courts, in an effort to wiggle out of statewide voting rules.

Florida: Noncitizen voter database has flaws, local elections officials say | Tampa Bay Times

Florida election supervisors, at their annual convention in Tampa this week, find themselves focusing once again on a familiar and troubling issue: the accuracy and reliability of the state voter registration database. It’s not a problem of their making, and that only adds to their frustration. As the elections officials convene, they are simultaneously seeking to verify the legal status of about 2,700 voters who were red-flagged by the state motor vehicle agency as non-U.S. citizens and thus ineligible to vote. Problem is, some people on that list can legally vote. One of the people on the list is Manoly Castro-Williamson, 48, of Wesley Chapel, a U.S. citizen and a registered Republican who has voted in every election in Florida since 2004. She was one of 13 potential noncitizen voters forwarded to Pasco County by state elections officials.

Editorials: Florida left untouched real source of voter fraud | Fred Grimm/MiamiHerald.com

Miami knows plenty about corrupting elections. We did a fine job of it in 1997. Maybe those leading the state’s bungled crusade to “protect the integrity of Florida elections” should have asked the experts. The Florida Division of Elections seems to harbor some paranoid notion that hordes of illegal immigrants have been descending on the polls and subverting the electoral process. It’s a peculiar premise, given that Florida’s sure-enough legal citizens hardly bother. In January, 87 percent of Miami-Dade’s voters ignored the charter-reform election. Perhaps we should encourage illegal immigrants to vote just to lend our government some semblance of a participatory democracy. Unhappily, illegal immigrants seem even more apathetic than the legal electorate. The state did manage to conjure up a list of potentially illicit voters by comparing voter registration lists against citizenship information compiled by Florida’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. Anyone ever subjected to the whims of the DHSMV office can guess how well that little experiment worked out.

Florida: State Steps Up Effort Against Illegal Voters | NYTimes.com

In an attempt to clear the voter rolls of noncitizens, a move that had set off criticism and a threatened lawsuit, Florida election officials decided on Thursday to use information from a federal database to check a list of 182,000 voters who they suspect are not citizens, officials said. Since last year, the Florida Division of Elections had sought access to the immigration database, which is maintained by the Department of Homeland Security, but the department said there were legal and technical difficulties in sharing the information. On Thursday, the elections division asked the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, which oversees driver’s licenses and originally compiled the list of 182,000 names, to use its access to the federal database to update its records and cross-check the names. … The state’s attempt to scrub registration rolls of illegal voters had come under fire because of the timing — less than seven months before a presidential election — and because the state itself could not guarantee the accuracy of its rolls.

Florida: Election chiefs skeptical of voter purge | Palm Beach Post

Florida’s local election supervisors on Wednesday sounded skeptical, and even distrustful, of a push by the state to remove thousands of potential non-U.S. citizens from the voting rolls just months before the critical 2012 elections. The supervisors, meeting at their annual summer conference, peppered state election officials with questions about the list of more than 2,600 people who have been identified as being in Florida legally but ineligible to vote. That list was sent to supervisors recently, but state officials have also said there may be as many as 182,000 registered voters who may not be citizens. State election officials want the state’s 67 county election offices to reach out to those on the list, determine their citizenship status and remove them from the rolls if they are not U.S. citizens. But election supervisors – including Democrats and Republicans – asked a range of questions about the level of proof that state election officials had regarding the citizenship status of voters which was culled by comparing voter registration lists to a state driver’s license database. They said they wanted more information before they purge someone from the voting rolls.

Editorials: 5 Voting Laws That Make People Angry | Huffington Post

A wave of Republican-sponsored laws restricting who can and cannot vote may mean that fewer Democrats, especially those who are low-income or minorities, vote in the 2012 presidential election. Since the beginning of 2011, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, and West Virginia have passed, or have plans to pass, restrictive voting laws. More than 70 percent of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency will come from these states, the Brennan Center reported in March. Republican lawmakers argue that the laws are necessary to prevent voter fraud, but fewer than 100 people have been charged with voter fraud in the past five years, according to the Washington Post. In 2011, former President Bill Clinton condemned the laws for disenfranchising Democrats, describing them as “the disciplined, passionate, determined effort of Republican governors and legislators to keep most of you from voting next time.There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the other Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today,” he said.

Florida: Noncitizen voter database has flaws, local elections officials say | Tampa Bay Times

Florida election supervisors, at their annual convention in Tampa this week, find themselves focusing once again on a familiar and troubling issue: the accuracy and reliability of the state voter registration database. It’s not a problem of their making, and that only adds to their frustration. As the elections officials convene, they are simultaneously seeking to verify the legal status of about 2,700 voters who were red-flagged by the state motor vehicle agency as non-U.S. citizens and thus ineligible to vote. Problem is, some people on that list can legally vote. One of the people on the list is Manoly Castro-Williamson, 48, of Wesley Chapel, a U.S. citizen and a registered Republican who has voted in every election in Florida since 2004. She was one of 13 potential noncitizen voters forwarded to Pasco County by state elections officials.

Florida: The hunt for non-citizen Florida voters exposes partisan divide | MiamiHerald.com

Amid an increasingly partisan dog fight, Florida elections officials say the number of potential non-citizens they’re examining on the state voter rolls is 180,000, a figure far higher than what was initially reported. Florida’s Division of Elections said Thursday that it’s combing through this initial, mammoth list of names — which were flagged during a computer database search — to make sure its list is as clean and as small as possible. The state is then turning over smaller batches of the more-verified names to local county election supervisors, who are contacting the potential non-citizens to see if they can lawfully vote. By the end of the process, the state could send counties as many as 22,000 names to check, one election source indicated, in a state with more than 12 million total voters. Right now, local supervisors have been sent nearly 2,700 names, about 2,000 of which are in Miami-Dade, Florida’s most-populous and most-immigrant heavy county.

Florida: 58 percent of voters targeted in Florida noncitizen hunt are Hispanic. Whites, GOP least likely to face purge | Miami Herald

Hispanic, Democratic and independent-minded voters are the most likely to be targeted in a state hunt to remove thousands of noncitizens from Florida’s voting rolls, a Miami Herald computer analysis of elections records has found. Whites and Republicans are disproportionately the least-likely to face the threat of removal, the analysis of a list of more than 2,600 potential noncitizens shows. The list was first compiled by the state and furnished to county election supervisors and then The Herald. The numbers change by the day. The state’s Division of Elections says it initially identified roughly 180,000 potential noncitizens by performing a search of a computer database that doesn’t have the most-updated information.

Kansas: Kobach concedes voter-citizenship plan dead | KansasCity.com

Secretary of State Kris Kobach conceded Thursday that Kansas won’t require first-time voters to provide proof of their U.S. citizenship ahead of this year’s elections because the Senate’s top leader effectively killed the proposal. Kobach, who pushed the proposal, declared it dead after Senate President Steve Morris assigned the legislation to a hostile committee. The House passed the bill Wednesday, and Kobach had hoped Morris would bypass a committee review, making an up-or-down vote possible in the Senate to determine whether the bill went to Gov. Sam Brownback.