Florida: Many questions, few answers on state’s voter purge plan | Miami Herald

Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner’s mea culpa tour to tout the state’s revamped noncitizen voter purge led to a tense exchange Wednesday with an election supervisor miffed about the state’s botched efforts last year. Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher peppered Detzner and his staff with questions about the process and the accuracy of the data to be used in the purge. “Where does that data come from, how often is it updated: every 10 years or every 10 minutes? … I have a lot of concern that the people we got the database from are saying this is not comprehensive and definitive,” Bucher said during a meeting at Broward County’s Voting Equipment Center in Lauderhill. Bucher’s questions revolved around the federal SAVE database that the state will use this time to search for non-citizen voters. Detzner explained that state agencies currently use SAVE data to verify that Floridians are eligible for millions of dollars in entitlements. “This is the best database we have to deal with,” he said. “This is important to get it right…It can be done and it will be done correctly.” But Bucher wasn’t satisfied, nor were voting activists who egged her on at times in the audience. A Democrat elected to a nonpartisan office, Bucher continued to ask multiple questions.

Florida: State Defends New Effort to Clean Up Voter Rolls | New York Times

Paving the way for a new attempt to remove noncitizens from voter rolls, Florida’s election chief tried to stoke confidence on Wednesday in the revamped plan before a largely skeptical crowd in immigrant-heavy South Florida. Maria Matthews of Florida’s Division of Elections and Ken Detzner, the secretary of state, met with election supervisors. For Ken Detzner — Florida’s secretary of state and the man in charge of elections — the meeting’s combative tone was the latest measure of the distrust engendered by the state’s move last year to try to weed out noncitizens from registration lists months before the polls opened. The Republican-driven decision to review the rolls took on political overtones because Hispanics in Florida vote largely for Democrats. Mr. Detzner, capping a five-city tour, defended his decision — if not the breakdown in the process last year — saying it is his obligation to ensure the integrity of the state’s voter rolls. Only American citizens are permitted to vote in elections.

Virginia: Purging voter rolls is tricky business | HamptonRoads.com

State elections officials have told local registrars to remove names from their voter rolls based on data from an information-sharing program used by 26 states. According to the program, some 57,000 voters have registered to cast ballots in Virginia and other states. If all of those voters were, indeed, ineligible to vote in Virginia, they should be kicked off the roll. But all of them are not. And that’s why the Democratic Party of Virginia has turned to the courts to block the effort. The party contends the lists include names of people who shouldn’t be removed and that state officials haven’t provided sufficient guidance, or established a consistent process, to assist local registrars in properly removing names. Lawrence C. Haake III, general registrar in Republican-heavy Chesterfield County, has offered support for Democrats’ case in a sworn statement submitted to the federal court. “The list sent to us from the (State Board of Elections) is clearly inaccurate and unreliable,” Haake said, describing the information-sharing program as new and saying that “its accuracy is not proven.”

Virginia: Democrats say thousands purged from voter rolls | Washington Post

A federal lawsuit filed by the Virginia Democratic Party claims that tens of thousands of voters in the state may be kept from casting a ballot in November after their names were wrongly placed on a list meant to weed out fraud. The court action names Gov. Robert McDonnell and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II as defendants and alleges that there were political motivations behind a “purge list” of about 57,000 voters whose names were also found on voter rolls in other states. The lawsuit, which comes as the contentious governor’s race enters its last month, contends that the list is inaccurate and that many of those voters are eligible to vote Nov. 5 in Virginia. Filed Oct. 1 in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., the complaint seeks to stop state and local election officials from striking those names from voter rolls. The names were discovered as part of a data-sharing program with 25 other states, which the lawsuit contends is “deeply flawed.”

Florida: New voter purge, new questions | Sun Sentinel

Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner is bringing his mea-culpa roadshow to South Florida today, part of a five-city effort to convince county elections supervisors that in combing the voter rolls for people who shouldn’t be there, this time his office will get it right. Detzner has a lot to prove in reviving the state’s voter-roll purge. Last year his Division of Elections claimed to have identified 182,000 noncitizens who’d registered to vote. But after a steady stream of targeted Americans came forward to prove their citizenship, the number dramatically dropped to 198, at which point county elections supervisors threw up their hands and suspended the effort.

Florida: A new push to purge Florida voter rolls | Herald Tribune

Florida’s latest effort to purge noncitizens from the voting rolls comes to Sarasota today. Secretary of State Ken Detzner will meet with area elections supervisors and local citizens to talk about “Project Integrity,” which is aimed at identifying and removing ineligible voters from the rolls. The two-hour meeting will be hosted by Sarasota Elections Supervisor Kathy Dent. Project Integrity follows a controversial effort by Gov. Rick Scott’s administration to purge noncitizens from the voter rolls before the 2012 elections. But that move was widely condemned and proved highly ineffective.

Virginia: Thousands stricken from voter rolls ahead of vote | HamptonRoads.com

Ebony Wright, a 37-year-old paralegal from Suffolk, has voted in the past three Virginia general elections and in two Democratic primaries. Yet on Sept. 27, Suffolk Registrar Susan Saunders sent Wright a letter saying her name had been stricken from the voting rolls because she’d moved to another state. Wright’s was one of 57,293 names on a list sent by the state Board of Elections to voter registrars across Virginia 10 weeks before the Nov. 5 election for governor, House of Delegates and city offices. State officials told registrars that simply being on the list was sufficient grounds for removal from the voting rolls. But they added that as a safeguard, registrars should carefully examine voting history and other information to make sure that the voter in question hadn’t returned to Virginia. In a lawsuit filed last week, the Virginia Democratic Party claims that the list is riddled with errors – that thousands of people on it live in Virginia and are legally entitled to vote here. The party also claims that the state failed to set uniform standards for how to handle people on the list, so local election officials are using widely different practices in deciding who to remove and what to do if they show up at the polls in November. The party holds up Wright as a prime example of the problem.

Florida: Gov. Rick Scott delivers mea culpa on voter purge | Miami Herald

In a rare display of contrition coming to a Florida city near you, Gov. Rick Scott’s administration is acknowledging what civil rights groups and local elections officials had already been saying: Last year’s attempted purge of noncitizens from voter rolls was fundamentally flawed. “I accept responsibility for the effort,” Scott’s secretary of state, Ken Detzner, told the Herald/Times. “It could have been better. It should have been better.” Detzner, who serves as Scott’s top elections official, is repeating the mea culpa during a five-day road tour that concludes this week in Orlando, Sarasota and Fort Lauderdale. The apology is part of a sales pitch to the public and supervisors of elections that a second attempt to remove noncitizens from voter rolls, “Project Integrity”, will be better. “We learned from the mistakes we made,” Detzner said. “We won’t make the same mistakes.” But forgiveness is hardly automatic. While encouraged that the admission was made, some said they are hesitant to trust state officials.

Florida: Democrats say Scott’s latest voter purge driven by politics | Miami Herald

Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Florida Democratic Party Chair Allison Tant said it was pure politics that was driving Gov. Rick Scott to push for a second purge of non-citizens from voter rolls. “What I say to Rick Scott is if your victory depends on a voter purge, then you’re not fit to govern and you don’t deserve a second term,” Wasserman Schultz said. “This is all about suppressing minority voters and shows how out of touch he is,” Tant said. The comments were made during a Thursday morning conference call with reporters about two hours before Scott’s Secretary of State, Ken Detzner, held the first of five public meetings with supervisors of elections and voters from around the state to discuss how the next purge will be conducted. A first attempt to remove non-citizens last year was impaired by faulty data that disqualified some eligible voters while identifying few actual non-citizens. The state’s list of suspected non-citizens shrank from 182,000 to 198 before supervisors suspended their searches, blaming shoddy data.

Virginia: Democrats Sue Governor, Cuccinelli; Claim Voter-Roll Purge | NBC4

In the wake of a lawsuit filed by Democrats over the purging of names from Virginia voter registries, a Loudoun County registrar has been ordered to purge names from her county’s list by the end of the week. Virginia Democrats filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, accusing them of purging — possibly in error — thousands of voters from registration lists. The Democratic Party of Virginia is accusing election officials, including Cuccinelli, of pressing forward with a plan to potentially purge up to 57,000 registered voters because an interstate database shows them registered in multiple states. The voter list was sent out from the State Board of Elections in late August, developed using a data exchange with some other states. The 57,000 names are those of voters who are registered in more than one state. Fairfax County immediately started to purge based on the list, and of the 7,934 names they were given, 7,106 were purged.

Florida: Detzner on next voter purge: “We won’t make the same mistakes” | Tampa Bay Times

Over the next week, Secretary of State Ken Detzner will visit five Florida cities to discuss a second attempt to purge non-citizens from voter rolls without repeating the mistakes from the first try. “I accept responsibility for that effort,” Detzner said. “It could have been better. It should have been better. We learned from the mistakes that we made. We won’t make the same mistakes.” Starting with a round table Thursday in Panama City, Detzner will try to convince Florida’s supervisors of elections that this time, the Division of Elections will get it right. An attempt made last year before the elections was marred by errors and led to lawsuits by civil rights groups that said the purge disproportionately targeted Hispanics, Haitians and other minority groups. “It was sloppy, it was slapdash, and it was inaccurate,” said Polk County Supervisor of Elections Lori Edwards.

Florida: State wants to scrub voter rolls again | Highlands Today

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.

Florida: Scott’s Voter Purge Part II hits the road in October | Miami Herald

Gov. Rick Scott promised that he would once again hunt for non-citizens on state voter rolls, and on Wednesday afternoon, his top elections officials released public details about taking the first steps toward another pruning effort. Secretary of State Ken Detzner announced in a statement that he would begin a roundtable discussion with the state’s 67 supervisor of elections in a series of five public meetings across the state in October. (Sorry Tampa Bay and Miami-Dade, the closest meetings are in Sarasota and Ft. Lauderdale.) Called “Project Integrity”, the meetings will be an opportunity for Detzner to hear from supervisors about how to conduct another purge. “I am embarking on the Project Integrity roundtable tour to collaborate with Supervisors to protect the integrity of our voter rolls,” Detzner said in the statement. He’s creating a new list of suspected noncitizen voters by cross-checking state voter data with a federal database managed by the Department of Homeland Security.

Florida: Supervisors wary of a new voter purge | Florida Today

Secretary of State Ken Detzner will take his pitch for a revived voter scrub on the road next month, but supervisors of elections and voting-rights advocates remain skeptical. Detzner’s office announced this week that he would meet with supervisors in five cities to get their input into another attempt to identify and remove non-citizens from the voting rolls. “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 announcing the “Project Integrity Roundtable Tour” of five cities beginning Oct. 3. But despite the spin put on “Project Integrity” by Detzner’s office, his announcement immediately 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!”

Florida: Election chief wants support for voter purge | Associated Press

Florida’s top election official, stung by criticism that the state previously relied on flawed data, wants to win support from skeptical election supervisors about a coming effort to remove non-U.S. citizens from the state’s voter rolls. Secretary of State Ken Detzner announced Wednesday that he will hold five meetings with county election officials in October on what he’s calling a “Project Integrity Tour.” Some critics have charged that Florida’s voter purge is an effort by Republicans to intimidate naturalized citizens who are likely minorities. But Detzner made it clear in a statement that Florida has no plans to back away from its already announced plans to identify potential non-U.S. citizens and remove them. This time around, though, state officials want to discuss the process they will use prior to distributing any lists of potentially ineligible voters to county officials. County election supervisors are the only ones with power to remove a 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. “Our elections process must uphold the integrity of local voter rolls.”

Editorials: Latest Florida voter purge scheme threatens immigrants’ voting rights | Facing South

It seems Florida just can’t resist the urge to purge. Last year, Gov. Rick Scott (R) went toe to toe with the federal government and civil rights groups for the power to needle thousands of Floridians — mostly Latinos — about their citizenship under the threat of voter roll expulsion. Scott lost that battle thanks in part to the Voting Rights Act. But not long after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Shelby v. Holder that the VRA coverage formula was unconstitutional, Scott began planning how to reinstate his purge program. This week, Floridians of color are speaking out against those purge plans as a class of people who are most likely to be challenged by the Florida government about their citizenship. The Florida organizations LatinoJustice PRLDEF, Florida New Majority and the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition, along with the national civil rights organization Advancement Project*, are speaking out against Scott’s plans and calling for county elections supervisors to reject the call to interrogate those the state has determined as possible “non-citizens.” The groups fear that Scott’s revived list maintenance scheme may unduly burden new naturalized citizens, most of whom are Latino and Haitians.

Iowa: Activists Ask Judge To Block Rule Allowing Voter Purge ‘Scare Letters’ | TPM

The Iowa chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa have sued Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz (R) over a rule that aims to remove names from voter rolls if a federal immigration database suggests they are not authorized to vote. The ACLU and the LULAC filed a legal motion in Iowa’s Polk County on Wednesday asking the judge to issue a ruling in the lawsuit, originally filed last year, and permanently block Schultz’s rule. Schultz was given tentative permission to use the rule Aug. 14. If the judge approves the request, the activists will have successfully stopped the proposed voter roll purge. The rule in question allows Schultz’s office to cross reference self-identified non-citizens on voter registration rolls with the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, which the Department of Homeland Security operates. The SAVE program retains information on immigrants in the country on a temporary visa. If a non-citizen on the SAVE list is also listed as a registered voter a letter is sent to the registrant telling him or her that he or she might be illegally registered to vote. If the voter does not respond to that first letter, a second letter is sent reminding “the individual that registering to vote without citizenship is a felony,” according to Schultz’s office. After the second letter a voter might have to appear before a hearing to present evidence on voter eligibility.

Mississippi: Walthall County agrees in federal court to purge its voter rolls | The Clarion-Ledger

A federal consent decree has been entered into by the Walthall County Election Commission to purge its voter rolls of deceased individuals, felons and duplicate registration after it was determined that the county has more voters on its rolls than the voting age population. Earlier this year, the non-profit Washington-based organization American Civil Rights Union filed a lawsuit against the county for failure to maintain its voter rolls under the National Voting Rights Act. Last week, U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett signed the consent decree between the county and ACRU.

Florida: Scott Takes Political Gamble With Renewed Voter Purge | Businessweek

Republican Governor Rick Scott is restarting his high-profile purge of suspected noncitizens from Florida’s voting rolls in a move to appeal to core supporters that risks losing the backing of key swaths of the electorate. Scott, seizing on the U.S. Supreme Court’s rejection of a main element of the Voting Rights Act, has revived one of his administration’s most contentious missions: rooting out noncitizens from Florida’s list of 11.8 million voters. While the move to fight fraud may burnish Scott’s appeal to Republicans, strategists say, it risks reviving memories of polling-place snafus in 2012 and alienating the state’s growing Hispanic population. The purge, which began before the 2012 election, stalled when several U.S. citizens were targeted and a Latino-advocacy group sued, claiming discrimination.

Florida: Ruling Revives Florida Review of Voting Rolls | New York Times

Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, newly empowered by the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in June that struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act, has ordered state officials to resume a fiercely contested effort to remove noncitizens from voting rolls. The program, which was put in place before the 2012 election, became mired in lawsuits and relentless criticism from opponents who viewed it as harassment and worse — a partisan attack by a Republican governor on Hispanic and Democratic voters. In a federal lawsuit filed last year in Tampa, an immigrants’ voting-rights group charged that the attempt to scrub the voter rolls disproportionately affected minority voters and that the state had failed to get Justice Department clearance as required under the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Florida: Rick Scott Plans To Resume Voter Purge Effort In Florida | Reuters

Florida Governor Rick Scott is planning a new effort to purge non-U.S. citizens from the state’s voter rolls, a move that last year prompted a series of legal challenges and claims from critics his administration was trying to intimidate minority voters. Voter protection groups identified a number of errors in the state’s attempt to identify people who are not American citizens on Florida’s voter lists months ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November 2012. The search also sparked several lawsuits, including one by the U.S. Justice Department, which claimed the effort violated federal law since it was conducted less than 90 days before the election. “We were recently informed that the State plans to continue their efforts to remove non-citizens from Florida’s voter rolls,” Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor Penelope Townsley said in a statement.

Florida: Governor to launch new purge of Florida voter rolls | Bradenton Herald

Gov. Rick Scott will soon launch a new hunt for noncitizens on Florida’s voter rolls, a move that’s sure to provoke new cries of a voter “purge” as Scott ramps up his own re-election effort. Similar searches a year ago were rife with errors, found few ineligible voters and led to lawsuits by advocacy groups that said it disproportionately targeted Hispanics, Haitians and other minority groups. Those searches were handled clumsily and angered county election supervisors, who lost confidence in the state’s list of names. “It was sloppy, it was slapdash and it was inaccurate,” said Polk County Supervisor of Elections Lori Edwards. “They were sending us names of people to remove because they were born in Puerto Rico. It was disgusting.”

Florida: Voter purge to resume after Supreme Court decision | Salon.com

A District Court in Tampa has dismissed a lawsuit challenging Florida’s voter purge, on the grounds that the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down a key part of the Voting Rights Act renders the lawsuit moot. The suit, which was filed by a Hispanic civil rights group and two naturalized citizens, argued that the state needed to clear its purge of suspected non-citizens with the Department of Justice, because certain counties in Florida were covered under Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. The court also lifted a stay that prevented officials from selecting any new names of suspected non-citizens from the voter rolls.

Florida: More fallout from voting rights act ruling: court dismisses challenge to Florida’s voter purge | Miami Herald

A federal court in Tampa dismissed the claim by civil rights activists Wednesday challenging the controversial 2012 voter purge enacted by Gov. Rick Scott and the state’s Division of Elections to rid the rolls of what they believed were scores of fraudulent voter registrations. The action was challenged by the the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law on behalf of Mi Familia Vota and two U.S. citizens and alleged it unconstitutionally targeted minority voters.

Florida: Voting Rights Decision Could Mean Return of Florida’s Voter Purge | Florida Center for Investigative Reporting

Until Congress is able to come up with new voting rights rules, states could give some of their most controversial voting laws a second life. The U.S. Senate today is discussing the Supreme Court’s decision to throw out a section of the Voting Rights Act. That section established a formula that determined which counties nationwide would be required to clear voting laws with the federal government before implementing them. Five counties in Florida fell under that part of the civil rights-era law. However, Congress is only beginning to discuss a possible replacement of the section. Today’s Senate hearing, according to MSNBC, “will feature testimony from VRA backers in the House and some prominent VRA opponents.”

Indiana: Bill Pushes State Officials To Examine, Purge Voter Rolls | Indiana Public Media

Legislation passed during the 2013 session requires a statewide mailing to verify and update voter registration information every two years and puts money behind the effort. Secretary of State Connie Lawson says voters will receive postcards in the mail with their registration info. They mail the cards back with any changes listed. Lawson says the mailing will also remove voters from the rolls.

Texas: Andrade resigns as Texas secretary of state | Houston Chronicle

Hope Andrade, the first Latina to serve as Texas secretary of state, abruptly announced her resignation Tuesday in the wake of controversy over a so-called voter purge. “It has been the highest honor of my professional life to serve as the secretary of state for the greatest state in our nation,” she said in a statement announcing her departure. In a letter to Gov. Rick Perry, who in 2008 named her to the post in which she served as Texas’ chief elections officer, the San Antonio resident said her resignation would be effective Friday. There was no immediate word on her replacement.

National: Behind the voting wars, a clash of philosophies | The Sacramento Bee

On Tuesday, voters will go to the polls in what is expected to be a nail-bitingly close presidential election. Indeed, we may wake up Wednesday morning, as voters did in 2000 and 2004, not knowing who won. If we are extremely unlucky, the election will be so close that it will go to a recount and possibly to the courts. The state whose votes are pivotal to the election outcome – Ohio, Florida, who knows? – will see its election process go under a microscope with full dissection in real time over Twitter and Facebook. It would get very ugly very quickly.

Florida: Architect of felon voter purge behind Florida’s new limits | Palm Beach Post

The Republican attorney who engineered the 2000 Florida felons list, which African American leaders said purged thousands of eligible blacks from voter rolls in the state and helped swing that election to the GOP, also wrote the first draft of Florida’s controversial House Bill 1355 that has restricted early voting and voter registration campaigns in 2012.
Emmett “Bucky” Mitchell IV, former senior attorney for the Florida Division of Elections, now in private practice in Tallahassee and serving as general counsel for the Florida GOP, testified in April in a federal voting rights lawsuit that he wrote the first draft of 1355. The Palm Beach Post uncovered the deposition while researching the origins of the law.

Florida: Judge says voter purge can go on | MiamiHerald.com

A federal judge in Fort Lauderdale ruled Thursday that Florida’s purge of potential noncitizens on the voter rolls can go on. U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch said federal law does not prohibit the state from removing voters who were never lawfully eligible to register in the first place. Florida has identified 198 voters as potential noncitizens — among an estimated 11.4 million registered voters — and sent the names to independent county elections supervisors for their review. A coalition of liberal-leaning voting-rights groups had asked the court to halt the purge, arguing in a hearing Monday that federal law prohibits purging the voter rolls 90 days before an election. Attorneys for Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner countered that the state could purge noncitizens at any time because they should have never been on the voter rolls. “We’re very pleased another federal court has ruled that Florida’s efforts to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls are lawful and in the best interest of Florida voters,” Detzner said in a statement Thursday. “Ensuring ineligible voters can’t cast a ballot is a fundamental aspect of conducting fair elections.”