Feds demand Florida cease its plan to find non-citizen voters

The Justice Department told Florida election officials that they are violating the 1965 voting rights act by seeking to remove ineligible voters from their rolls.

By Marc Caputo

Posted on Thursday, 05.31.12

mcaputo@MiamiHerald.com

The head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has demanded that Florida cease its hunt for noncitizen voters, saying it breaks a 20-year-old voter registration law.

At issue: the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voters, and the federal National Voter Registration Act, which forbids states from conducting programs to "systematically remove ineligible voters" within 90 days prior to a federal election.

"Our records do not reflect that these changes affecting voting have been submitted to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for judicial review or to the Attorney General for administrative review as required by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act," wrote Christian Herren, the DOJ’s lead civil rights lawyer.

"Accordingly, it is necessary that they either be brought before that court or subitted to the Attorney General for a determination that they neither have the purpose nor will have the effect of discriminating on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group under Section 5."

Also, he said, since the next federal election is Aug. 14, the state should have ceased the attempted purge on May 16, according to the letter Herren wrote. His reasoning closely resembles the tone and substance of a group of liberal-leaning voting-rights groups.

“To enable us to meet our responsibility to enforce federal law, please inform us by June 6 of the action that the State of Florida plans to take concerning the matters discussed in this letter,” wrote Herren. “Specifically, please advise whether the State intends to cease the practice discussed above, so that the Department can determine what futher action, if any, is necessary.”

So far, the state has identified nearly 2,700 potential noncitizens on the voter rolls by comparing its elections database with citizenship data maintained by the state’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

County elections supervisors, along with The Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times, have found that many people identified as potential noncitizens are actually citizens who are lawfully registered to vote.

A Miami Herald analysis further found that a disproportionate number of those flagged as potential noncitizens – 58 percent –are Hispanic. Hispanics are Florida’s largest immigrant group. No-party-affiliated voters were the most-likely to be targeted and whites and Republicans were the least likely to be flagged.

A coalition of voting-rights and liberal-leaning groups wrote Secretary of Ken Detzner last week and demanded that the elections office under his control cease with the noncitizen voter hunt. The groups intended to sue if the state proceeded. They pointed out the National Voter Registration Act “expressly forbids states from conducting programs to ‘systematically remove ineligible voters” within 90 days prior to a federal election.”

Since the next federal election is Aug. 14, the groups say, the state should have ceased the attempted purge on May 17.

But the state contends that the law isn’t so clear.

“We disagree with their interpretation,” said Chris Cate, spokesman for the Florida Division of Elections.

Cate wouldn’t specify the source of the state’s disagreement. Some defenders of the state note that the federal registration act says a voter “may not be removed from the official list of eligible voters except…as provided by State law, by reason of criminal conviction or mental incapacity.” And, since state law forbids noncitizens from voting, the state can purge them because it’s “provided by state law.”

But Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, an attorney for the Advancement Project and the other elections groups, said that exception only applies to felons or those with “mental incapacity” – not potential noncitizens.

“The law is clear,” she said, “You’re not supposed to conduct these systemic efforts within 90 days of a federal election.”