Florida: Voter Purge Adds to Debate Over Voting Rights Act | Article 3

In this firefight, the first shot was Governor Scott’s, the next belonged to the Department of Justice and the winner might just be the civil rights era Voting Rights Act up for Supreme Court review next term. What’s the story? Governor Scott’s chief election official announced Florida’s intention to sue the Department of Homeland Security for access to a federal database that would help state officials better identify and remove non-citizens currently on their voter rolls. Moments later the Justice Department counter-sued Florida for violation of federal laws. Why? Unlike other Southern States, from Alabama to Mississippi to Virginia, the state of Florida is not covered as a whole but it does have five jurisdictions subject to Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Passed in an effort to outlaw discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act requires covered jurisdictions to seek preclearance from federal judges, or the Department of Justice, before changes can be made “to any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting.” Florida’s unilateral action was in violation of this act.

Florida: DOJ To Sue Over Florida’s Voter Purge | TPM

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is planning to sue the state of Florida for purging voters from its rolls in violation of federal law, Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez said in a letter to Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner Monday. DOJ warned Florida last month that its efforts to purge individuals believed to be noncitizens from the voter rolls would violate federal law because the process had not been cleared by either the Justice Department or a federal court, and because the purge was taking place too close to Florida’s August primary. Perez wrote Monday that he “authorized the initiation of an enforcement action against Florida in federal court” because the state had “indicated its unwillingness to comply” with federal laws.

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.

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: State, feds and elections supervisors continue war of words over voter purge | WFSU

At the Leon County Supervisor of Elections Office, volunteers sign up to work with the League of Women Voters. One of the group’s core missions is to help people participate in democracy by registering them to vote.  On Wednesday, about 15 volunteers showed up to become voter registrars. One of them is Katie Pospyhalla, a college student majoring in Middle Eastern studies who said people her age don’t care enough. “And it’s something that I kind of hope to change. I kind of want to be like, ‘Wake up! These are your issues too and you need to get involved…nicely, of course,” she laughed. A battle is heating up over Florida voters, but it isn’t political candidates who are fighting. Voter registration groups claimed victory in court as a judge struck down parts of the state’s election law last week. And this week, the state stands defiant against a federal order to stop purging non-citizen voters. These fights over voting rights have pitted Florida Governor Rick Scott against the federal government and all 67 of the state’s supervisors of Elections.

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 Registration groups relaunch drives, but state digs in on voter purge | Facing South

Florida’s ever-escalating voting wars (see hereand here) have seen two big developments recently. First: Last week, a judge blocked most of Florida’s aggressive new restrictions on how groups can register voters. In his opinion, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle argued in his opinion that the time limits and penalties thrust onto groups like the League of Women Voters, which ultimately caused them to famously shut down their voter registration drive in the state, was unconstitutional:

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.

That decision led the League and Rock the Vote to announce this week that they wereresuming their voter registration drives in the battleground state.

Florida: Scott looks ready to fight DOJ over Florida voter purge | MiamiHerald.com

Gov. Rick Scott’s administration is positioning itself for a showdown with the U.S. Department of Justice for demanding that Florida cease searching for and purging noncitizen voters. The DOJ gave Florida until Wednesday to respond to a letter, sent last week, that said the purge probably ran afoul of two federal voting laws. Florida will respond, but it probably won’t quit its effort and will likely ask the DOJ to clarify its interpretation of the federal laws it cited. “Our letter will address the issues raised by DOJ while emphasizing the importance of having accurate voter rolls,” said Chris Cate, spokesman for Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner, who’s in charge of the state’s elections division. Cate would neither confirm nor deny what was in the state’s response, but he acknowledged that the state disagrees with the federal government and doesn’t plan to throw in the towel. “We know we’ve been acting responsibly,” he said.

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.

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.

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: 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.

Florida: Voter purge gets pushback from elections supervisors, U.S. Justice | Palm Beach Post

Florida elections supervisors said Friday they will discontinue a state-directed effort to remove names from county voter rolls because they believe the state data is flawed and because the U.S. Department of Justice has said the process violates federal voting laws. Late Thursday, the Department of Justice sent Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner a letter telling him that an effort launched by Republican Gov. Rick Scott’s administration last year to remove the names of people believed to be non-citizens from voter rolls appears to violate at least two federal voting laws. The federal agency gave Detzner until Wednesday to respond. The Justice Department letter and mistakes that the 67 county elections supervisors have found in the state list make the scrub undoable, said Martin County Elections Supervisor Vicki Davis, president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections. “There are just too many variables with this entire process at this time for supervisors to continue,” Davis said.

Voting Blogs: Florida’s Voter Purge … and The Federalist Papers | Ned Foley/Election Law Blog

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”  So said Madison famously, in Federalist 51.  He continued with a more significant observation: “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”  Underlying this observation was his recognition that political science could not count on politicians always acting virtuously. Yet Madison also knew that if politicians lacked virtue altogether, democracy (or what he would have called “republicanism”) would be impossible.  Here’s how he put this important counterpoint in Federalist 55:

“Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us, faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.”

Thus, Madison saw the challenge of successful constitutional design for a democracy as economizing upon an existent but finite supply of virtue among otherwise self-interested politicians.  To this end, he gave us the architectural principles of federalism and separation of powers.  “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition”—so that no single institution of government, even in a democracy, can exercise too much power over the lives of the citizenry. Yet, as I read recent news reports of efforts in Florida to purge the state’s voter rolls of noncitizens, I wonder if Madison’s principles of constitutional design are adequate to the task of election administration in the twenty-first century.  Or perhaps the better question is whether the current institutional arrangements we use in the United States for election administration are adequately in accord with Madison’s fundamental principles of constitutional design.

Tennessee: Shelby County Election Commission reclassifies 180,000 voters | The Commercial Appeal

In the 2008 presidential election, when Shelby County counted a record 401,081 votes cast on the Nov. 4 ballot, the final turnout of 66.9 percent was considered strong but still meant some 33 percent of the nearly 600,000 people on the county’s voter rolls chose not to participate. Was it apathy? Or, as recent aggressive moves by the county Election Commission suggest, was it something more simple — absence. A spring cleaning of the county’s voter rolls, based on identifying names of people who had not cast ballots in any federal election since 2006, has resulted in voting rolls that as recently as March showed 611,937 voters now listing just 431,054 names. The commission says there is a simple explanation for how some 180,000 names vanished from the publicly available voting rolls. The most substantial change involved moving 151,826 people who have not voted in any of the two most recent federal election cycles to “inactive” status. Those voters remain eligible to vote, but since they have not voted in any federal election over a four-year stretch, they are no longer considered “active” voters, and the commission, under the control of county Republicans since 2010, has decided to include only the “active” voters on its registered voting statistics.

Florida: Part of controversial Florida voter registration law struck down; votor roll purge ordered halted | Bradenton Herald

A federal judge Thursday struck down a key part of Florida’s recently revamped election laws, saying the Legislature’s restrictions have made it “risky business” for third-party groups to register new voters. Hours later, the Justice Department ordered Florida’s elections division to halt a systematic effort to find and purge the state’s rolls of noncitizen voters. Florida’s effort appears to violate both the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which protects minorities, and the 1993 National Voter Registration Act — which governs voter purges — T. Christian Herren Jr., the Justice Department’s lead civil rights lawyer, wrote in a detailed two-page letter sent late Thursday night. State officials said they were reviewing the letter. But they indicated they might fight the Justice Department over its interpretation of federal law and expressed frustration that President Barack Obama’s administration has stonewalled the state’s noncitizen voter hunt for nine months.

Florida: State defends voter roll ‘purge’ after protest from DOJ | CNN

Florida’s proposed elimination of non-U.S. citizens from its voter rolls is necessary to preventing voter fraud, a spokesman for the state’s Division of Elections said Friday after the U.S. Department of Justice called into question the legality of the action. The so-called “voter purge” would remove names from Florida’s voter rolls months before the 2012 presidential election, when Florida will play a key role as a battleground state with a large chunk of electoral votes. In a statement, Chris Cate said the decision to remove names from the list was essential to preventing non-citizens from casting ballots illegally. “The Department of State has a duty under both state and federal laws to ensure that Florida’s voter registration rolls are current and accurate. Therefore, identifying ineligible voters is something we are always doing,” Cate wrote. He added that the action was not meant to prevent minority voters from voting.

Florida: DOJ eyes Florida voter roll purge of non-U.S. citizens | Politico.com

A top lawyer for the Justice Department’s civil rights division wants Florida officials to explain why they’ve unilaterally decided to purge the state’s voter rolls of non-U.S. citizens just months before a key primary in the 2012 elections — an apparent violation of provisions in the landmark Voting Rights Act. In a two-page letter, T. Christian Herren, chief lawyer for Justice’s Voting Rights division, told Florida’s secretary of state that officials’ decision to comb the rolls for foreign nationals was launched without consulting Attorney General Eric Holder or asking permission from a federal court, long-standing requirements under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.  Further, Herren writes, the state hasn’t officially justified why it launched the scrub, which activists say is haphazard, subjective and disproportionately hurts minority voters. At the same time, the practice is happening less than 90 days before an upcoming statewide election, which “appears to violate the National Voter Registration Act,” Herren said.  “Please advise whether the state intends to cease the practice … so the [Justice Department] can determine what further action, if any, is necessary.”

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.

Florida: GOP Chair Compares Disenfranchising Voters to Stopping Drunk Drivers | ThinkProgress

Yesterday, Florida GOP Chair Lenny Curry released a statement defending Gov. Rick Scott’s (R-FL) plan to purge tens of thousands of voters from Florida’s voter roles. The purge is based on an error riddled list of purportedly ineligible voters which includes hundreds of eligible U.S. citizens in just one county. According to Curry, purging voters is just like a DUI checkpoint:

This past Memorial Day weekend, law enforcement put up checkpoints to ensure drunk drivers did not threaten the safety of fellow motorists. Undoubtedly, many of the drivers who were met by police were, in fact, not driving drunk. However, we accept the notion that on such a heavily traveled holiday, a few moments of inconvenience to law-abiding drivers is worth it if we can ensure safe highways. Similarly, officials in Florida are undertaking a methodical and reasonable effort to maintain the security of Florida’s voter rolls.While some who are citizens, and others who are not deceased, may be asked to simply participate in the verification process, thousands of these records do accurately reflect non-citizens and people who have died.

But, of course, police do not throw sober drivers in jail or take away their license. Curry’s metaphor would only make sense if Florida police randomly pulled over and jailed thousands of citizens, with little evidence they had been drinking, and then required them to show proof of their soberness before letting them out of jail.

Voting Blogs: Meet The 91-Year-Old WWII Veteran Targeted By Florida’s Voter Purge | Think Progress

Bill Internicola is a 91-year-old, Brooklyn-born, World War II veteran. He fought in the Battle of the Buldge and received the Bronze Star for bravery. He’s voted in Florida for 14 years and never had a problem. Three weeks ago, Bill received a letter from Broward County Florida stating “[Y]ou are not a U.S. Citizen” and therefore, ineligible to vote. He was given the option of requesting “a hearing with the Supervisor of Elections, for the purpose of providing proof that you are a United States citizens” or forfeit his right to vote. This decorated World War II veteran is just one of hundreds of fully eligible U.S. citizens being targeted by Governor Scott’s massive voter purge just prior to this year’s election, according to data obtained from Florida election officials by ThinkProgress.

Florida: Voter-Purge List Appears Flawed | TheLedger.com

The state recently released a list of registered voters in Florida, including some in Polk County, that it says are non-U.S. citizens and therefore ineligible to vote. Not so fast, says Polk Supervisor of Elections Lori Edwards. Nearly half the people on Polk’s part of the list do appear to be citizens. Workers in her office have examined registration records from the 21 Polk residents on the list, and nine appear to be citizens, leaving 12 as questionable. Statewide, a list of 2,600 names was sent to election supervisors. Three of those Polk residents flagged by the State Division of Elections had listed their place of birth as Puerto Rico. That string of islands is a U.S. protectorate, so people born there are U.S. citizens. Most of the 21 Polk residents flagged by the state have Hispanics names.

Florida: Controversy brewing over Gov. Scott’s push to purge Florida’s voter rolls | BayNews9

The presidential elections are just a few months away and it’s almost time for Floridians to make their decision. But 180,000 voters may not get to weigh in as Gov. Rick Scott is pushing to purge the state’s voter rolls. In the words of Gov. Scott, “people lie” about having citizenship when they register to vote, which is why he has signed off on a massive review of the voting rolls. In a new letter, Democratic members of Florida’s congressional delegation are asking Scott to stop the review before it turns into what they call a “purge” of legal voters.

Tennessee: 40,000 Memphis Voter Records Erased? | Fox 13 News

Norma Lester with the Shelby County Election Commission says the commission chair requested an investigation into recent allegations of thousands of county voter histories being purged, according to a letter FOX 13 obtained. Blogger Bev Harris with Black Box Voting originally said her research showed that 488 lifelong voters, mainly African American and democratic voters, were missing in the Shelby County registry. People on this list include political figures like Darrick Harris and Edmund Ford. “There’s 600,000 voters on the Shelby County voter list and for it just to happen to African Americans in one particular district who vote democrat is certainly not just random chance,” says Harris. Harris says after continuing her research, she found that not just 488 but 13,000 voter histories have been erased from the Shelby County voter registry. … Congressman Steve Cohen says the missing records go even deeper. The Congressman announced on Sunday that he’s contacted U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder about 40,000 missing voter histories, which Cohen says is the precursor to purging. He says he noticed the discrepancy in Dec. 2011 when he pulled records from Aug. 2010 for his election mailings.

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: Voter Purge, Minority Voting Rights Flashpoints Of New Showdown In Florida | Huffington Post

Florida officials made it clear Friday that the state will continue to purge as many as 182,000 suspected noncitizens from the state’s voter rolls — despite a coalition’s call to stop the process or prepare for court. In the last three weeks alone, the Florida secretary of state’s office has identified and started to purge what it says are at least 50,000 dead voters from the state’s rolls and stripped out about 7,000 convicted felons. Officials at the same time are defending a more controversial plan to remove as many as 182,000 suspected noncitizens from the state’s voter rolls. “Florida has a very shameful history of purging minority voters based on false information before presidential elections,” said Katherine Culliton-Gonzalez, director of voter protection projects for the Advancement Project, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that works to protect voter rights. The Advancement Project is one of the five organizations in the coalition that warned Florida last week to discontinue plans to purge alleged noncitizens from the state’s voter rolls. It also called on the Department of Justice to temporarily halt the purge and investigate the state’s actions. “What’s happening now, is not only illegal but it’s inaccurate, Culliton-Gonzalez said. “There are actual citizens on these lists. So, what’s happening is completely counter to the fundamental principals of our democracy.”

Voting Blogs: Florida Should Avoid Misdeeds of the Past | Brennan Center for Justice

Florida does not have a good track record with voter purges. In 2000, Florida’s efforts to purge persons with criminal convictions from the rolls led to, by conservative estimates, close to 12,000 eligible voters being removed because the state’s process was so imprecise that an eligible voter named John Michaels could be confused with an ineligible person named John Michaelson. In 2004, Florida’s purge had a blatant racial disparity. Now, in 2012, Florida’s Secretary of State recently announced new efforts to purge Florida’s voter rolls. The initiative purports to be targeting non-citizens and deceased persons for removal from the voter rolls, but because Florida’s past efforts purged eligible voters from the rolls, careful scrutiny is warranted to ensure eligible Americans will not be blocked from voting. Clean voter rolls are very important. We all benefit when states undertake responsible list maintenance procedures. Because the fundamental right to vote is at stake when voter list cleansing efforts are undertaken, the process must be transparent, accurate, and under reasonable time frames, especially when the list maintenance effort is of the scale Florida is proposing.

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.

Florida: Timing of scrubbing noncitizens from voters rolls worry election supervisors | Tampa Bay Times

In February, county election supervisors got some news from the state motor vehicle agency: A database audit in April 2011 had identified more than 20,000 potential non-U.S. citizens on voter rolls. But the Florida Department of State, which knew of the audit, didn’t begin forwarding a portion of those names to county election supervisors until recently — just six months from the presidential election in November. That yearlong delay has frustrated many election supervisors, who worry database scrubbing could be tainted by accusations of politics this close to an election. Hispanic, Democratic and independent-minded voters are the most likely to be targeted in the review, an analysis by the Miami Herald found.

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.