South Florida Democrats say Gov. Rick Scott leading “misguided” effort to purge voters from state rolls

Posted on Tue, May. 29, 2012
By Amy Sherman
asherman@MiamiHerald.com

 

 Taimy Alvarez / Sun Sentinel

Bill Internicola, a 91-year-old Army veteran of World War II who earned the Bronze Star and the Legion of Honor for his service, is one of the voters targeted by the state as a potential non-citizen, and was ordered to prove his citizenship or lose the right to vote. He is flanked by U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Boca Raton, who called on Gov. Rick Scott to stop his purge of voter rolls immediately.

Bill Internicola was born in Brooklyn 91 years ago and received a Bronze Star for fighting in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, but, according to the state of Florida, he may not be a U.S. citizen.Internicola received a letter in May from the Broward Supervisor of Elections stating that it received "information from the State of Florida that you are not a United States citizen; however you are registered to vote." The letter was part of a controversial state-led effort to rid the voter rolls of noncitizens. Similar letters were sent to 259 Broward voters.
Internicola said he was “flabbergasted” by the suggestion that he wasn’t a citizen. He called the county’s election office and said: "Are you crazy?"
Internicola shared his story at a press conference Tuesday in Davie, where he was joined by two members of Congress: Ted Deutch (D-Boca Raton) and Alcee Hastings (D-Miramar). The Democratic lawmakers say Internicola is an example of Gov. Rick Scott’s “misguided” effort to purge legal voters from the rolls before this year’s presidential elections.
Internicola said he sent Broward a copy of his Army discharge papers. He is one of six voters on the list who have provided paperwork to prove they are citizens, said Mary Cooney, a spokeswoman for the supervisor.
Broward was following the direction of the state Division of Elections, which initially identified roughly 180,000 potential noncitizens by searching a computer database from the state’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. But the drivers’ license list doesn’t automatically update when someone becomes a citizen.
The state whittled that list to more than 2,600 voters and forwarded those names to counties. A Miami Herald analysis of the list found it was dominated by Democrats, independents and Hispanics. The largest number were from Miami-Dade, home to the state’s highest foreign-born population.
In Miami-Dade, 359 voters have provided proof that they are citizens. The county determined on its own that an additional 26 were citizens, while 10 others either admitted they were ineligible or requested to be removed.
Voters have 30 days from the receipt of the letter to provide documentation of citizenship or they will be removed from the rolls.
Any effort to remove names from Broward’s voting rolls draws particular scrutiny because it is the most Democratic county in the state. It has more than 500,000 registered Democrats and could play a pivotal role in the outcome of a close presidential or U.S. Senate contest in November.
Deutch called Internicola an “American hero” and described him as “the face of Gov. Scott’s request to purge our voter rolls."
Internicola said he was born in Brooklyn to an American-born mother and Italian-immigrant father. He traveled to several countries in Europe during World War II working as a medic where his nickname was “Pepsi” — since his last name ends with “cola.” He got married, worked as a vice president of a restaurant chain in New York, had a son and daughter, and said he moved to Florida in the 1980s.
Broward voting records show that Internicola registered in 1991 and has been a frequent voter — including the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections — and in at least a couple of municipal elections. He’s a lifelong Democrat
Internicola admitted to one discrepancy in records. He says he was born in 1921, though he said his drivers’ license indicates 1919. The reason: in his youth he wanted to start driving early so “I bent the truth a little bit.”
Hastings said the state was engaging in "voter suppression" and using a "back-door poll tax" by not sending a pre-stamped envelope to voters to mail back their proof of citizenship.
Deutch and Hastings wrote a letter to Scott Tuesday questioning the timing of the voter roll drive just three months before the primary.
“Providing a list of names of questionable validity — created with absolutely no oversight — to county supervisors and asking that they purge their rolls will create chaotic results and further undermine Floridians’ confidence in the integrity of our elections,” stated the letter also signed by Florida Democratic Rep.’s Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Frederica Wilson, Corrine Brown and Kathy Castor. 

They asked Scott to “immediately suspend the purge of voter registration lists” in order to “ensure not one Floridian finds his or her legitimate voting rights callously stripped away.”

Chris Cate, a spokesman for the state Division of Elections, defended the state’s actions. “It’s very important we make sure ineligible voters can’t cast a ballot,” he said in an email to the Herald on Tuesday.
He said the state continues to identify ineligible voters, saying the state Division of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles has agreed to update information using a federal database that the elections division couldn’t access directly.
“We won’t be sending any new names to supervisors until the information we have is updated, because we always want to make sure we are using the best information available,” Cate wrote. “I don’t have a timetable on when the next list of names will be sent to supervisors, but there will be more names.”
Also complaining to Scott was Florida’s only statewide elected Democrat, Sen. Bill Nelson.

"Attempts to purge the voter roll so soon after signing one of the nation’s most controversial voting laws raises concern, especially among young and minority voters,"

 Nelson wrote in a letter to Scott.
Republican Party of Florida Chairman Lenny Curry slammed Nelson for practicing the “worst kind of politics.”
“Senator Nelson not only asks our public servants to ignore the threat to electoral integrity, but he implies those who meet their legal obligation to ensure honest elections are being discriminatory,” he said in a statement. “Nelson’s distortions and willingness to pit people against each other based on race demonstrates the worst kind of politics.”
In an interview, Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes said she is complying with the state’s orders, but does not believe the bulk of the voters who have yet to respond are non-citizens. She called for the state to stop the process and vet the list more carefully using more sources of records beyond the drivers’ license data.
“List maintenance is ongoing,” Snipes said. “We would have gotten folks off the rolls if they are not supposed to be there anyway.”
Broward Party’s Democratic chairman Mitch Ceasar said the number on the county’s list — 259 among more than 1 million registered voters in Broward — “is very very microscopic.” But he questioned the action led by Scott’s administration.
“It’s not by accident that Florida is doing this and all these other states that have Republican governors are doing it,” Ceasar said. “The odds are too high that they had the same independent thought of each other.”
Colorado and New Mexico have also launched similar efforts to check voter databases for noncitizens.
Miami Herald Political Writer Marc Caputo contributed to this report.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/29/v-print/2822073/south-florida-democrat-say-gov.html#storylink=cpy

Gov. Rick Scott makes the media rounds to defend purge and lawsuit

In a series of back to back interviews on morning cable news and radio drive time stations today, Florida Gov. Rick Scott defended his decision to sue the federal government Monday for failing to provide access to the federal immigration database that could help the state sort out which voters on its rolls are not citizens.
"Look, the debate's over. We know we have almost 100 individuals that are registered to vote that are non U.S. citizens. Over 50 of them have voted in our elections. I have an obligation to enforce the laws of our land. You don't get to vote in Florida if you are a non U.S. citizen,'' he told CNN anchor Christine Romans on the morning show Starting Points.
"The Homeland Security has been stonewalling to give us the database we're entitled to. We have been asking for months -- make sure we do it the right way -- so we are put in a position where we had no choice but to sue Homeland Security to get that database to make sure your right as a citizen is not diluted by somebody that's a non U.S. citizen illegally voting in our state."

Romans then pressed him. She said  the federal government says the state cannot "infringe on the rights of a citizen's right to vote" by going after non citizens. She noted that the federal government has said it is prepared to give the state access to the database when it provides the necessary immigration information, which the state has failed to provide. Scott avoided an answer. "Christine, here's what we know. We know that individuals are voting in our state illegally. They're not U.S. citizens. We know the best database is the SAVE database. We've asked for it for months from Homeland Security. We want to work with Homeland Security to get it. So we've done all the right things. We are put in a position where we don't have a choice but to sue them to get the database that we're entited to to make sure U.S. citizens votes are not diluted."
Romans: "Are you purging your voter rolls right now?"
Scott: "No. Here's the way the process works. If there's critical evidence that somebody is registered to vote that's not they get sent a letter. They get 30 days to respond. They respond. If they don't respond they get taken off the rolls but if they show up to vote, they get to vote provisionally."
When Romans pressed the point about the state faiing to provide the information necessary to access the SAVE database, Scott said: "We've done everything the right way. For whatever reason, they've decided not to give it to us...We were put in a position where we didn't have any choice."
He denied the purge is an attempt to remove Democratic voters.
"This is not a partisan issue,'' Scott said. "This is an issue I want, all of us want, to have every U.S citizen to participate to vote...but not U.S. citizens. That's illegal."

Rep. Rooney to DOJ: Why are you allowing potential voter fraud?

A letter from Rep. Tom Rooney to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder over his agency's decision to fight Florida's noncitizen voter purge:

Florida has uncovered a widespread problem of illegal and erroneous voter registration, exposing as many as 182,000 registered voters as non-U.S. citizens. The Department of Justice has an obligation to work with the state to prevent voter fraud and ensure that illegal votes are not cast, yet your department has consistently obstructed Florida’s efforts and has been either unresponsive or outright hostile to legitimate requests for information. Your department has now directed the state of Florida to stop removing non-citizen voters from registration rolls. This direction is not only groundless, it stands in stark contrast to federal laws directing states to coordinate voter registration records and ensure their accuracy. Your actions further demonstrate that the Department of Justice, under your leadership, is more concerned with protecting the reelection prospects of the President than with upholding justice and enforcing the rule of law.
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 explicitly directs states to ensure that voter registration records are accurate by coordinating them “with other databases within the State.” Florida has complied with that law by checking registration records against driver’s license records. Your department now claims that this procedure required pre-approval under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. That claim is simply untrue.
Section 5 applies to only five counties in Florida, not the entire state, and it only requires those counties to get pre-approval from the Justice Department or a federal court before making changes to voting procedures or rules. Florida has always, in accordance with federal law, used state databases to confirm citizenship information, so this does not constitute a “change” that would require pre-approval. Even if Section 5 did apply, it would not apply to the entire state, so DOJ cannot stop these efforts statewide. Furthermore, House bill 1355, which was pre-approved by the Justice Department, allows the secretary of state to use sources like DMV records to remove registrants who are not U.S. citizens.
Your department also alleges that the removal violates Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act, which prohibits the removal of names from voter registration rolls within 90 days of an election. This claim is also false. Section 8 applies to previously eligible voters who have become ineligible for certain reasons, like moving out of state. It does not apply to voters who have become ineligible through death, criminal conviction, or mental capacity. Section 8 does not apply to voters who were ineligible at the time they registered, which is a felony, including noncitizens.
Even if Section 8 did apply, Florida is in the position of purging the voter rolls at this time only because the Obama Administration violated federal law by refusing Florida’s request to compare registration records with the Department of Homeland Security’s records on noncitizens. If not for the Obama Administration’s stonewalling, this necessary purge of illegal voters would have been completed nine months ago, when the state requested this information.
While your department should be working with Florida to stop voter fraud, you are instead actively working to keep noncitizens – who have committed a felony – on our state’s voter rolls. It is time for you to end your blatant politicization of your position as Attorney General and the Department of Justice as a whole. Please direct the Voting Section of the Department to end its baseless efforts to stop Florida from removing illegal, noncitizen voters from its registration rolls, and please direct your Department to uphold its obligation to prosecute those who have committed a felony by registering to vote illegally.
Sincerely, Thomas J. Rooney Member of Congress

Don't try and stop the foreclosure process'

By Steve Benen

 - 

Tue Jun 5, 2012 10:11 AM EDT

Last fall, campaigning in Nevada, Mitt Romney took a curious line on housing policy, which Democrats were quick to seize on.
The Republican said at the time, "[D]on't try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course, and hit the bottom." In states like Arizona, Florida, and Nevada, where so many families are underwater, Romney's line on foreclosures is likely to be problematic.
Perhaps this will be an Etch A Sketch issue for the former governor? No, apparently not. Bloomberg News talked to Lanhee Chen, Romney's policy director, who echoed the candidate's sentiments.

Romney ... doesn't intend to offer targeted relief for the 11.5 million American homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, Chen said, suggesting that such actions are temporary fixes insufficient to stabilize the housing market.
"Governor Romney has indicated that there are some steps we ought to take to ensure that we're growing our economy," Chen said. "But on the housing market specifically, I do think we have to resist the temptation for short-term approaches."

In other words, for struggling homeowners, the message is, "Good luck."
In several key swing states, the housing crisis has taken a brutal toll, and it stands to reason this will be a targeted campaign issue in the fall.

The Truth-O-Meter Says:

PolitiFact Florida examines whether voter purge is a "backdoor poll tax"

Democratic U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings recently appeared at a news conference bashing Gov. Rick Scott's noncitizen voter purge with Bill Internicola, a Brooklyn-born World War II vet who appeared on a list of potential noncitizens.
Before it started, Hastings asked Internicola if the Broward Supervisor of Elections had mailed him a stamped envelope to send back his proof of citizenship.
Internicola, who had voted for decades and is a Democrat from Davie, answered no.
Hastings responded, "There is also a backdoor poll tax. In the letter that he (Internicola) received I asked him a moment ago he did not have a prepaid envelope to send it back meaning he had to buy a stamp. Don’t tell me how little it is -- that stamp is a cost. And the state should not be about the business of emaciating voter rights. They should be in the business of causing people to participate."
Was Hastings correct to compare the requests from elections officials to Internicola and others on the list to a "backdoor poll tax"?

Alcee Hastings on Tuesday, May 29th, 2012 in a press conference

U.S. Rep. Hastings says Florida's noncitizen voter purge is a "backdoor poll tax."

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Florida set off yet another firestorm about voting rights in May when state elections officials forwarded a list to counties of about 2,700 potential noncitizens who illegally registered to vote.

The state told county election supervisors to contact the residents and ask them to supply proof of citizenship. If the voters failed to comply, they’d be removed from the voter rolls within one or two months.

A partisan war broke out: Democrats cried foul that this was directed by Republican Gov. Rick Scott and just happening months before a presidential election. Republican leaders pointed out that it’s a felony for noncitizens to vote. A Miami Herald analysis determined that there were more Democrats than Republicans on the list and that about 58 percent were Hispanic.

The U.S. Department of Justice ordered the state to halt its noncitizen purge on May 31. A DOJ lawyer argued that Florida was violating federal law including the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Gov. Rick Scott is fighting the DOJ’s demand.

A few days before the feds intervened, two Democratic congressmen from South Florida -- Alcee Hastings and Ted Deutch -- held a press conference with a voter flagged by the state: Bill Internicola, a Brooklyn-born World War II vet, who had voted for decades and is a Democratic voter in Davie, a town in Broward County.

Before the press conference officially started, Hastings asked Internicola if the Broward Supervisor of Elections had mailed him a stamped envelope to send back his proof of citizenship. The answer: no. That led Hastings to say this during the press conference:

"There is also a backdoor poll tax. In the letter that he (Internicola) received I asked him a moment ago he did not have a prepaid envelope to send it back meaning he had to buy a stamp. Don’t tell me how little it is -- that stamp is a cost. And the state should not be about the business of emaciating voter rights. They should be in the business of causing people to participate."

Was Hastings correct to compare the requests from elections officials to Internicola and others on the list to a "backdoor poll tax"?

The process for documentation for those on the list
The Florida Division of Elections started with a list of about 180,000 potential noncitizen voters based on drivers’ license data, which is not updated when someone later becomes a citizen. The state sent an initial batch of about 2,700 names to counties.

From there, county election supervisors mailed out letters asking the potential noncitizens to send back documentation proving U.S. citizenship (a copy of a birth certificate or passport, for example). Miami-Dade, the county with the highest number of voters on the list, did not provide an envelope while neighboring Broward County provided an envelope but no stamp.

Florida division of elections spokesman Chris Cate said the voters could respond to their county supervisor in a number of ways including in person, mail, email or fax.

"We have an obligation to ensure the integrity of Florida’s elections, and making sure the voter rolls are accurate is a crucial part of upholding the integrity of our elections," Cate said.

Some voters with access to a fax and a copy machine could have completed the process for free (or for the cost of the paper). For those who had to buy a 45-cent stamp and make copies or deliver it in person requiring gas and parking, we figure the cost for some could be less than $1 or up to $3.

History of the poll tax
We interviewed 14 professors about the poll tax and Hastings’ claim. We also read this article by California Institute of Technology Professor Morgan Kousser and portions of a book about the history of voting rights by Harvard history professor Alex Keyssar. We also consulted our False ruling of U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s (D-Weston) claim that compared GOP-backed voting bills to Jim Crow.

Poll taxes referring to a tax on each male head had been around in various forms for many years, but after Reconstruction it was taken to mean a tax required to vote. Florida adopted one in 1889.

Southern states passed these poll taxes to raise revenue for state governments and to prevent poor blacks and poor whites from voting. Some experts described it as a concerted effort to halt blacks from voting while others said it was more a matter of class power.

"It wasn’t so much a matter of racial discrimination -- it was a matter of class power," Keyssar said in an interview. "Black people were tenants and workers."

Some states required poll taxes to be paid several months before an election and required voters to bring a receipt to vote -- further barriers to voting. The poll tax was effective because at $1 to $2, that was a significant amount of a person’s cash income.

The effect on turnout was significant. During the presidential races in the 1880s, black turnout in Georgia, which had the poll tax, was less than half of that in Florida, Kousser said.

It’s somewhat difficult to pinpoint the number disenfranchised by the poll tax or other voting restrictions. But Kousser said the poll tax disenfranchised millions in the South.

"It was more than any other single device responsible for fastening white supremacy on the South for 70 years or so," Kousser said.

Southern states starting repealing the poll tax in the 1930s including Florida. The 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ratified in 1964 barred poll taxes in national elections and two years later the Supreme Court in Harper vs. Virginia barred them in state elections under the Equal Protection Clause.

How is it the same or different than poll tax
We asked experts on the poll tax and elections if they agreed with Hastings analogy and found no consensus. Some experts agreed with Hastings at least in part -- one professor said he’d start to use the same comparison.

"If voters, as a practical matter, are required to spend money out of their own pocket -- even a relatively small amount -- in order to prove their eligibility and therefore vote, then it's functionally equivalent to the poll tax," wrote Daniel Tokaji, election law professor at Ohio State University.

But other experts saw key differences in the poll tax and Florida’s recent potential noncitizen voter purge. One expert cautioned us that this is a partisan issue and that it might be difficult for PolitiFact to reach a factual conclusion.

"To most Democrats, what Hastings says is self-evidently true: Yes, it’s a back-door poll tax. They are trying to make it harder for poor people to vote," wrote Michael Klarman, a Harvard law professor who identified himself as a Democrat in an email. "Most Republicans would deny this, and I think they truly believe what they are saying: They are trying to eliminate or reduce vote fraud. Most Democrats don’t acknowledge that such fraud exists."

Here are the arguments for how the noncitizen voter documentation effort and the poll tax are the same:

• Both disproportionately affected minorities: The poll tax reduced the number of blacks who could vote. Florida’s potential noncitizen voter list was 58 percent Hispanic, 14 percent black and 13 percent white.

"Thus, Rep. Hastings' term, ‘a backdoor poll tax,’ is accurate as it applies to blacks as a group, because still today blacks have a lower median income than whites. Granted, it is not as onerous monetarily as the tax was back in the sixties, but it is still a tax that imposes a heavier burden, proportionally, on blacks than whites," said Chandler Davidson, a sociology professor at Rice University.

• Requiring extra steps for voters is a burden: Voters often had to show their receipt to vote under the poll tax which is analogous to the potential noncitizens having to present documents at elections’ offices in advance of voting.

• Both require at least some voters to pay to vote: In the case of the poll tax, it applied to all men but in reality was a burden for poor blacks and whites. Florida’s recent noncitizen voter purge required some residents to provide proof of citizenship which meant a cost for many to mail in documentation, make copies or drive and possibly pay to park at an elections office. Note this category also includes a difference: The poll tax applied to all while the recent purge applied to few.

Now, how it is different.
• The cost for voters: The poll tax of between $1-$2 was a significant sum for blacks and poor whites at the time. The cost of a stamp and making a copy of a birth certificate today is less than the cost of the poll tax instituted more than 100 years ago.

"Now, when Mr. Hastings says potential voters might be disfranchised by having to buy a stamp, I say, ‘Give me a break!’ That is absurd," wrote East George College history professor T. Adams Upchurch. "To put it in perspective, my home state of Mississippi levied its poll tax in 1890 at $2. That was tantamount to Florida voters today having to pay about $200 for the privilege of voting. Poor people could absolutely and rightly claim discrimination if that were the case. But a stamp? Please."

• Numbers: The poll tax disenfranchised the majority of black residents as well as poor whites -- one professor said it disenfranchised about two-fifths of voters. The noncitizen voter drive affected a very small percentage of Florida’s electorate -- even if the state had continued to send names from the list of 180,000 that would be less than 2 percent of the overall nearly 11.3 million voters in Florida.

• Right to vote: Poor blacks and whites should have had a right to vote. In the current Florida case, noncitizens don’t have the right to vote -- it’s a felony. We haven’t heard anyone argue that noncitizens should get to cast a ballot -- the controversy is that there were errors on the list -- many were citizens. And some critics say that some voters simply didn’t get the letter or would be discouraged from responding. Since the many of those who received the letters didn’t respond to elections officials and the state was working with outdated information, it’s unclear if the majority on the list are citizens or not.

• Every expense associated with voting isn’t a poll tax: Many voters drive to the polls to vote -- the cost of gas isn’t a poll tax. In the noncitizen case, a stamp isn’t the only way to deliver the form -- someone might get a ride from a friend and drop it off.

We sent Hastings’ office our list of similarities and differences and asked if they wanted to respond and did not hear back.

Our ruling
After Broward residents received letters asking them to submit documentation proving their citizenship in order to vote, Hastings described it as a "backdoor poll tax" because they had to buy a stamp to mail in the documents.

Hastings is correct that there are some similarities between the poll tax and Florida’s recent search for noncitizen voters. The most important similarity is that minorities in both cases were disproportionately affected. And in both cases, it added costs and burdens to vote.

"Any effort to introduce an election procedure that requires some voters to incur financial costs could be thought of as a metaphoric or perhaps real poll tax," Keyssar said.

But there are some important differences including that the poll tax had a far more widespread effect than Florida’s search for noncitizen voters. While poor black sharecroppers couldn’t afford the poll tax, the issue for some of the Florida voters may be more of the inconvenience than the expense.

We rate this claim Half True.

Senate GOP kills Paycheck Fairness Act

By Steve Benen

 - 

Tue Jun 5, 2012 3:35 PM EDT

Two years ago, a majority of the Senate supported the Paycheck Fairness Act, but it died at the hands of a Republican filibuster. At the time, every GOP senator, including the so-called "moderates," not only opposed the legislation, but also refused to even let the bill have an up-or-down vote.
Two years later, the exact same thing happened.

Democratic legislation meant to fight gender discrimination in the workplace failed in the Democrat-controlled Senate Tuesday on a procedural vote.
In a 52 to 47 tally the Senate defeated the Paycheck Fairness Act. The legislation aimed to increase protections for women filing gender discrimination lawsuits, as well as create a federal grant program to improve salary negotiating skills of women. The vote was strictly along party lines, with the two Independent senators voting with the Democrats and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) not voting.

There were some hopes that less-conservative Republican senators like Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) might break ranks on this one. For that matter, vulnerable Republican incumbents like Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.) could have sided with Democrats purely for appearances, knowing that their votes wouldn't affect the outcome.
Perhaps some of the senators being considered for the Republican vice presidential nomination, such as Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), John Thune (R-S.D.), or Rob Portman (R-Ohio), might side with women to make themselves more palatable to a national audience? No, they all backed the filibuster and killed the bill, too.
The GOP opposition was as unanimous as it was unyielding, White House lobbying notwithstanding.
For those unfamiliar with the substance behind the legislation, the bill would "enhance the remedies available for victims of gender-based discrimination and require employers to show that wage differences are job-related, not sex-based, and driven by business necessity. The measure would also protect employees from retaliation for sharing salary information, which is important for deterring and challenging discriminatory compensation.
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which we discussed with Ledbetter herself last night, was an important step forward when it comes to combating discrimination, but it was also narrowly focused to address a specific problem: giving victims of discrimination access to the courts for legal redress. The Paycheck Fairness Act is a broader measure.
With women still only making 77 cents for every dollar men earn in similar jobs, the question may soon become why so many Republicans seem indifferent to the problem.

League of Women Voters to restart registration drive

The League of Women Voters said they are ready to resume their interrupted registration efforts just days after winning a federal injunction against Florida.

Posted on Wednesday, 06.06.12

By Adam C. Smith Tampa Bay Times

ST. PETERSBURG -- Veteran League of Women Voters volunteer Mary Berglund had been registering voters since 1986, until the civic group a year ago abruptly halted its 72-year practice in the face of a new Florida law restricting voter registration campaigns.
“It just seemed so unfair and was so unexpected,’’ Berglund said of the 2011 state law that, among other things, imposed stiff fines for groups that failed to submit voter registration forms within 48 hours of obtaining them.
But Berglund and her civic-minded colleagues gathered in front of a Pinellas County elections office Wednesday to announce they are getting back in the game. After a federal judge last week temporarily blocked parts of that new elections law as violations of the First Amendment, the League of Women Voters and other groups are resuming their nonpartisan registration efforts.
“We’re going to dust off our clip boards and pick up the forms and get into the business of registering people to vote,” declared St. Petersburg League of Women Voters President Darden Rice. “Registering citizens to vote is part of our core mission, and we’re excited to get back to work.”
At a similar news conference in Orlando, organizers were joined by officials from the nonpartisan group Rock the Vote, which also is resuming Florida voter registration efforts in the wake of last week’s court ruling.
Rock the Vote president Heather Smith said her group registered 100,000 young voters in Florida in 2008 and still should be able to surpass that total this year. Deirdre Macnab, president of the Florida League of Women Voters, estimated her organization, which also emphasizes educating voters about issues and candidates, registers tens of thousands of people each cycle.
The voter registration groups still will face more restrictions than they’ve been accustomed to, including registering with elections offices and submitting the names of every volunteer collecting voter registration forms.
“There is going to be a significantly greater amount of record-keeping than we had in the past. We hope that it is a manageable,’’ said Macnab. “Our volunteers want to put in an hour or two. They don’t want to do a lot of administrative record-keeping.”

How Obama aided and abetted Scott’s voter purge mess

I am dismayed by all of this. My home state believes that they have an overpowering duty to delete voters on their rolls who are non-republican.

This is how we lost the 2000 race. Gov Scott ought to just come out and say exactly what is going on, be up front, stop lying. This voter 'fraud' all over the country, is bull shit. There is no quantified list that shows absolute voter fraud. Not to the so called lengths that Republicans are trying to blast us with.We have federal bills on record that protect voters rights. But now with the Republicans in charge in a majority of states, and the house, who want to send back to the states what has been a federal right. What the hell is happening to our United States of America? Can somebody please tell me? Our basic equal rights are being slowly taken away.  What will be next? Women are being 'raped' of our rights(mainly in the states) to health care, equal pay, school, service to our country( this is another totally different blog for a different time). And then to implicate the President, is just another way to discredit the office and the man....

Posted on Sun, Jun. 03, 2012
Marc Caputo
mcaputo@MiamiHerald.com

Gov. Rick Scott’s administration created a mess by trying to get rid of noncitizen voters. And President Barack Obama’s administration helped him do it.
First, Obama’s Department of Homeland Security stonewalled the state’s noncitizen voter hunt for almost nine months by refusing Florida access to an immigration database. Then, on Thursday, Obama’s Justice Department ordered the purge to halt, in part because time had run out.
Ironically, DOJ’s order cited the so-called “Motor Voter” law, which actually calls on states to purge ineligible voters. One former DOJ lawyer and critic, conservative J. Christian Adams, blogged that the former Obama appointee in charge of the voting section announced early on that it would ignore Motor Voter’s purge obligation.

No enforcement

“We have no interest in enforcing this provision of the law,” he quoted Julie Fernandes as saying in 2009 when she was an assistant attorney general. “It has nothing to do with increasing turnout, and we are just not going to do it.” She has since left DOJ.
So to recap: The feds delayed and then said “time expired” under a law it selectively enforces.
And it’s not the only selective reading by the feds.
A 1996 immigration crackdown law gives Florida the right to access the Homeland Security database known as SAVE, which stands for “Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements.” The federal law provides for “customer agencies to use SAVE for any legal purpose such as background investigations and voter registration.”

Mum’s the word

The words in that quote come from page 12 of Homeland Security’s own booklet on SAVE. So why won’t DHS heed the law and its own booklet and share its info?
It won’t say. “Talk to DOJ,” a Homeland Security official said in an email Friday
DOJ isn’t forthright, either.
Thursday afternoon, a spokesman for the voting section of the Justice Department said it wouldn’t comment on whether it would heed the call of liberal-leaning civil rights groups to stop Florida’s noncitizen voter purge. It also refused to answer questions about Motor Voter.
Hours later, about 8 p.m., DOJ sent its de facto cease-and-desist letter to Florida, and then forwarded the letter to a liberal blog.

Scott not blameless

None of this is to say the feds have reason to trust Florida or Scott or give them the benefit of the doubt, however.
Scott and his fellow Republicans tried to change elections rules with a new law, passed last year, that cracked down too hard on voter-registration rules and that removed Sunday-before-Election Day early voting when African Americans have flocked to the polls. A federal judge Thursday struck down major “onerous” parts of the law, which DOJ is fighting as well.
Also, Scott campaigned in 2010 for an Arizona-style immigration law that could require local police to start hunting illegal immigrants. Obama is challenging the law in court, and the Homeland Security Department probably isn’t too keen on giving Scott’s administration access to its immigrant database.
And overall, this former Confederate state has had a shameful history when it comes to race and voting. There’s a reason five Florida counties — Monroe, Hillsborough, Hardee, Hendry and Collier — are specifically targeted by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which protects minorities.
Under the act, Florida needs federal permission before making elections-related changes. But Scott’s administration didn’t ask. So DOJ said Florida should stop the purge.
Florida’s noncitizen hunt will disproportionately hit minorities, specifically Hispanics, who are the larges immigrant group. They are, therefore, the most likely to be targeted in a noncitizen voter purge. A Herald analysis found 58 percent of those flagged as potential noncitizens are Hispanic.
Republicans, the whitest and least immigrant-heavy political party in Florida, were the least likely to face a purge.
So far, only 13 people have been purged in Miami-Dade — out of 505 people contacted — because they acknowledged they weren’t citizens. Of them, two might have voted. The overwhelming number, 492, were found to be citizens.
In all, Miami-Dade had 1,637 potential noncitizens identified of the nearly 2,700 found by the state. Miami-Dade, like the other counties, has halted the noncitizen hunt because of problems with the state’s list and after the DOJ told the state to stop.
DOJ noted that Motor Voter bans voter purges within 90 days of a federal election — that is, as of May 16 in advance of the Aug. 14 primary.
Scott might fight DOJ in court. Republicans are cheering him on, claiming there’s widespread “voter fraud.” Democrats are fighting back the so-called “voter suppression.”
The two sides can’t seem to compromise or even agree on the same facts.
While the Florida Division of Elections should clean the rolls, someone should have realized that — federal law or not — this is a big undertaking, it would be politically explosive and it should have been started a lot earlier.
Still, it’s doubtful Florida would be in this situation if DHS had given access to SAVE when Florida asked in October 2011.
Without SAVE, Florida relied on a motor-vehicle database that’s not updated when someone becomes a citizen. So those immigrants who become citizens and then register to vote can look like noncitizens via a simple database query.
Initially, Florida found 180,000 potential matches. It then greatly pared down the list to almost 2,700 by double-checking the information and then sending its potential noncitizen list to county elections supervisors.
Florida won’t release its original list of 180,000 potential matches. DHS won’t let Florida have access to SAVE. And DOJ’s not being straight with the mainstream press or, apparently, with its enforcement of federal law.
“My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government,” Obama wrote on the White House’s blog. “We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.”
But closed government, of the type shown by DOJ and DHS, helps promote messy voter rolls and partisan recriminations. And just in time for the presidential elections.

• 
  intelligentLife

  So out of the 505 miami-dade voters that Scott's administration single out as illegal voters, 492 were citizens?
  How darn stupid is this guy? 
  I wonder how many thousand of dollars were spent to discover the possibility that two people who weren't supposed to vote may have voted.
   BTW, how is two possible illegal voters in a county with over a million voters is "widespread voter fraud?"

  
  
• 
  Judson Wallace

  I think I see what you're saying.... we should drug test them all too!

  
  
• 
  dogdooisbetterthanyou

  you guys:  I think we just need to drug test all of the politicians, and maybe brain test them, too...

  
  
• 
  dogdooisbetterthanyou

  We already know that politicians can't pass a lie detector test, LOL.

  
  
• 
  sinbadsailor

  The point of this article is that Obama’s Department of Homeland Security stonewalled the state’s noncitizen voter hunt for nearly nine months by refusing Florida access to an immigration database.
  Something is very wrong when our federal government turns a blind eye to voter fraud and harasses the only entity that is trying to clean it up.

  
  
• 
  hoodrobin

  hey republican poster boy! you meant dubya gw bush created
  Department of Homeland Security what about the presidential elections 2000 voter fraud votes still uncounted and lockdown somewhere in some dark dungeon you dim wit and all your stupid likes! yall tools for weapons of mass deceptions and compounded lies.. me like shrek and donkey on the road again looking for republicans and teabaggers! hold my mule!

  
  
• 
  ytrewq

  So you think purging LEGITIMATE democrats is "cleanup" ?

  
  
• 
  Kenneth

  As usual regeratating the suprress the voters republican talking point, yet to date they can come up with no creditable evidence of voter fraud. something like 2 out of a million vote cast and those two were basically voting out of District. For anyone to believe that all of a sudden a bunch of illigal people will come out of the shadows and vote is living in la la land and a complete fool. This is not about voter fraud, its about the Republican Party desperately trying to supress the vote because they realize, this is the only chance they have. All one have to do is look at the map before President Obama no problem. know, the Southern States Republicans Governors still can accept the election so revert to 21st Century Jim Crow, we will use the guise voter fraud, they want notice. Republican smoke and mirrors and the under estimating of the itelligence of Americans want fly this time.
  
  
• 
  L J

  There is something wrong when THEIR IS NO VOTER FRAUD and we have a "news" organization promoting it as fact.
  It does NOT exist and throwing resources at it and not want to feed hungry Americans is disgusting.

  
  
• 
  martiansaresmarter

  politicians ARE NOT HIRED employees that take drug tests, have background checks, or have ANY qualifications for their jobs. these CRIMINALS are (S)elected into office cuz otherwise THEY'd NEVER be employed anywhere.

  
  

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/03/2830794/how-obama-aided-and-abetted-scotts.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/03/v-print/2830794/how-obama-aided-and-abetted-scotts.html#storylink=cpy

Feds to Florida: halt non-citizen voter purge

Posted on Thu, May. 31, 2012
By Marc Caputo
mcaputo@MiamiHerald.com

The Justice Department ordered Florida’s elections division to halt a systematic effort to find and purge the state’s voter rolls of noncitizen voters.

Related Content

• Investigation of two non-citizen voters may bolster Scott’s fight with feds
• Hispanics, NPAs more likely to face noncitizen voter purge than whites, GOP
• Florida’s voter purge: A drive for accuracy but lots of wild cards
• Voter apathy — not Florida’s new voting laws — may hurt turnout in 2012

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/31/2826708/feds-demand-florida-cease-its.html#storylink=cpy

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 DOJ 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.
“We are firmly committed to doing the right thing and preventing ineligible voters from being able to cast a ballot,” said Chris Cate, spokesman for Secretary of State Ken Detzner, who was ordered by Gov. Rick Scott to conduct the search for potentially ineligible voters.
DOJ’s written demand came hours after the agency refused to comment on the matter to The Miami Herald. It also followed a federal court ruling Thursday that struck down a Republican voter-registration law that a judge found too onerous.
So far, Florida has flagged 2,700 potential noncitizen voters and sent the list to county elections supervisors, who have found the data and methodology to be flawed and problematic. The list of potential noncitizen voters – many of whom have turned out to be lawful citizens and voters – disproportionately hits minorities, especially Hispanics.
About 58 percent of those flagged as potential noncitizens are Hispanics, Florida’s largest ethnic immigrant population, a Miami Herald analysis found. Hispanics make up 13 percent of the overall 11.3 million active registered voters.
Independent voters and Democrats are the most likely to face being purged from the rolls. Republicans and non-Hispanic whites are the least likely.
Under the Voting Rights Act, Florida needs federal approval before it makes changes to voting because five Florida counties – Monroe, Hillsborough, Collier, Hardee and Hendry – had minority-voting troubles decades ago
"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," Herren wrote.
"Accordingly, it is necessary that they either be brought before that court or submitted 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."
He gave the state until next Wednesday to inform the Justice Department of its planned course of action.
“Specifically, please advise whether the State intends to cease the practice discussed above, so that the Department can determine what further action, if any, is necessary,” Herren wrote.
Herren also said that the National Voter Registration Act bans Florida’s effort because it says “a State shall complete, not later than 90 days prior to the date of a primary or general election for Federal office, any program the purpose of which is to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters.”
Florida elections officials have repeatedly said that their efforts comply with all federal laws, which aren’t clearly written. The also say there’s nothing discriminatory or partisan about the effort. It’s simply trying to remove ineligible voters: felons, dead people and noncitizens.
To spot noncitizens, though, the state began comparing voter rolls with a Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicle database that contains some citizenship information that the agency collects when people get a state ID such as a driver’s license.
But the citizenship data in many cases is out of date. That is, many people become citizens after they get their ID and then register to vote. But the highway safety database isn’t updated.
As a result, the state has performed its own checking and double-checking and winnowed down a pool of 180,000 potential noncitizens to a list of about 2,700. It is asking the counties to contact the voters by mail. Those who don’t respond within about two months of being contacted could be stricken from the rolls.
A coalition of liberal-leaning civil rights groups complained to the Justice Department and the state about the process, pointing out that it burdens citizens instead of the government.
Cate, the state elections spokesman, said the state will have a full response soon. The agency also seemed to express frustration with the lack of help from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which maintains citizenship data but won’t share its database with Florida.
Detzner asked again for DHS help on Thursday.
“We provided information to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security today in hopes that the federal government would help us identify ineligible voters,” Cate said. “While this isn’t a response from DHS as to why they haven’t provided us access to their data, at least we know the federal government knows we take ineligible voters on the voter rolls seriously. We hope the federal government will recognize the importance of accurate voter rolls and support our efforts.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/31/v-print/2826708/feds-demand-florida-cease-its.html#storylink=cpy

Florida and feds sue each other over noncitizen purge controversy

Posted on Tue, Jun. 12, 2012
By Marc Caputo
mcaputo@MiamiHerald.com
 

J Pat Carter / AP

Scott

Gov. Rick Scott and the Obama administration traded legal barbs and counteraccusations Monday as each side announced it would sue the other over Florida’s controversial noncitizen voter purge.Scott’s chief elections official sued first, filing a federal lawsuit in Washington that accused the U.S. Department of Homeland Security of unlawfully refusing Florida access to a federal database that could help the state spot and remove noncitizens from the voter rolls.
“We can’t let the federal government delay our efforts to uphold the integrity of Florida elections any longer,” Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner said. “We’ve filed a lawsuit to ensure the law is carried out and we are able to meet our obligation to keep the voter rolls accurate and current.”
The state says it has found 87 noncitizens on the voter rolls so far, at least 47 of whom may have unlawfully cast ballots. More than 500 others have been identified as actual citizens and lawful voters.
Moments after the state filed suit, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas E. Perez roared back in a sharply worded five-page letter from the U.S. Department of Justice, which ordered the state two weeks ago to stop the purge because it could violate two federal voting laws.
The state’s program is too “faulty” ” and comes too close to election time to not endanger the voting rights of thousands of lawful U.S. citizens, Perez wrote. He said Florida has repeatedly ignored Homeland Security’s warning that the department’s database, known as SAVE, isn’t designed for the noncitizen hunt on which Florida embarked.
“The significant problems you are encountering in administering this new program are of your own creation,” Perez wrote.
“Your claim that the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security have worked in concert to deny Florida access to the SAVE Program is simply wrong,” Perez added. “Please immediately cease this unlawful conduct.”
Perez wrote his letter in response to a letter written last week by Detzner. Detzner, in turn, was responding to a DOJ demand that Florida cease the purge. Perez said that because of Florida’s “unwillingness” to comply with the law, “I have authorized the initiation of an enforcement action against Florida in federal court.”
Meantime, the American Civil Liberties Union has also sued the state to stop the effort, which is largely on hold in nearly every county because elections supervisors say they’re concerned with the quality of the 2,700-person list of potential noncitizens generated by the state.
That’s a fraction of a list of 180,000 potential noncitizens the state initially identified. That larger list has not been released by the state.
The fight between the state and federal government is but one battle in the war over voting rights and voting integrity in the nation’s most important swing state, where the scars of voting irregularities were magnified in the 2000 elections.
Liberals accuse Scott of “voter suppression;” conservatives say the Obama administration is allowing “voter fraud.”
So far, there’s less evidence of suppression and more evidence of fraud.
The number of noncitizens who are on the rolls or appear to have cast unlawful ballots grows by the day. And there’s no evidence yet that any lawful voter has been kicked off the rolls. Still, it’s tough to prove if someone actually cast an illegal ballot.
Consider the case of Andre Fiset, a 59-year-old noncitizen from Quebec who lives in Hollywood. Records show he voted before 2006 — far back enough that no records survive to show if he actually signed in and cast a ballot at the polls. He said he didn’t.
“I don’t know what this is about,” Fiset said. “I didn’t vote. They keep sending me voter cards, but I never voted.”
He was removed last week from the voter rolls. It’s a state and federal felony for noncitizens to register as voters or cast ballots.
About 87 percent of those listed as potential noncitizens are minorities, a Miami Herald analysis showed. Hispanics and Haitians are Florida’s largest immigrant group. So any search of noncitizens will disproportionately target them.
Minorities account for 53 percent of the 87 confirmed noncitizens who have actually been removed from the rolls, a Herald analysis found.
Still, to liberal groups like MoveOn, the bottom-line statistics are proof that the noncitizen voter purge is “racist.”
Conservative activists are growing more vocal and are starting to actively back Scott, who addressed a Tea Party group Sunday in Tallahassee.
Non-Hispanic whites and Republicans are the least likely to face the prospect of being identified as noncitizens and removed from the rolls. Of those so far removed, 41 percent are Democrats, 22 percent are independents and 31 percent are Republicans — which largely mirrors the state’s party registration breakdown for its more than 11.3 million active voters.
“This is not a partisan issue,” Scott said Monday on the conservative FOX News show, Your World with Neil Cavuto, where he announced the state lawsuit. “This is an issue that we need to have fair elections in our state.”
But the Justice Department and ACLU said the process of Florida’s noncitizen purge program is the problem.
The ACLU sued Florida in federal court last week to stop the purge, saying the effort violates the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which requires Florida to get permission for election-law changes in Hillsborough, Monroe, Collier, Hardee and Hendry counties.

The Department of Justice said two weeks ago that the Florida effort probably violated the 1965 act as well as another federal law, the National Voter Registration Act, which bans voter purges within 90 days of a federal election, meaning the state is banned from purging the rolls after May 16.

But Secretary of State Detzner last week refused to stop and told DOJ in a letter that Justice is misreading federal law.
Detzner said Florida didn’t need to seek federal permission under the Voting Rights Act to embark on the purge because DOJ had already signed off on a state law that allows Florida to remove noncitizen voters. 
Also, he said, the 90-day ban on purging voters doesn’t apply to the removal of noncitizens.
Detzner and Scott have pointed out that Florida’s purge would have been conducted much sooner, but the Department of Homeland Security refused Florida the right to access the SAVE database, which details which immigrants become citizens.
Florida first asked DHS for the database last year. Federal law says the database has to be shared.
But, for the first time publicly in response to the voter-purge issue, the federal government finally explained that Florida might not be able to use the database because the SAVE Program requires “unique identifiers… found on immigration-related documents” to produce accurate checks.
Without SAVE, Florida’s elections division then began comparing the voter rolls with a Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles database, which contains some citizenship information.
But that information can be out of date. And that can lead the state to mistake a lawful voter as a potential noncitizen.
Those identified as noncitizens had 30 days to respond to county elections supervisors or risk being removed from the rolls after another 30 days. Florida law allows those who were removed to get back on the rolls and, if necessary, cast a provisional ballot on Election Day.
One wrongly identified potential noncitizen — 91-year-old Brooklyn-born, World War II vet Bill Internicola — didn’t just prove his citizenship. He called his congressman, held a press conference and became the face of the program’s errors.
The Justice Department referred to Internicola’s case in Perez’s letter.
“As one would expect with a new program that has not previously been tested against real-world information,” Perez wrote, “your program has critical imperfections, which lead to errors that harm and confuse eligible voters.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/11/v-print/2844300/florida-sues-department-of-homeland.html#storylink=cpy

Federal judge strikes down part of new election law

Posted on Fri, Jun. 01, 2012
By Steve Bousquet and Marc Caputo
Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau

A federal judge on 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.U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle told the state it cannot require groups to submit voter-registration forms within 48 hours or face $1,000 fines. Nor can the state force those groups to disclose names of volunteers who don’t collect the forms, Hinkle ruled.
“The short deadline, coupled with substantial penalties for non-compliance , make voter registration drives a risky business,” Hinkle wrote. “If the goal is to discourage voter registration drives and thus make it harder for new voters to register, the 48-hour deadline may succeed.”
Hinkle said voter-registration activity is protected speech under the First Amendment. His injunction means that groups will have 10 days to submit voter forms, as they did before the law was changed.
The 48-hour requirement is in effect in 62 of Florida’s 67 counties, but it remains suspended in five others. That’s because any changes in voting laws in those counties must be pre-cleared either by the U.S. Justice Department or a panel of three federal judges in Washington. The state opted for a three-judge panel, which must weigh Hinkle’s decision as it decides whether to pre-clear the 48-hour provision in those five counties: Hillsborough, Monroe, Collier, Hardee, and Hendry.
The judge’s decision is a defeat for the Republican-controlled Legislature that enacted the new restrictions, and Gov. Rick Scott, who signed them into law in 2011. It’s a victory for three grass-roots groups that brought the lawsuit: Rock the Vote, the Florida Public Interest Group Education Fund, and League of Women Voters of Florida, which suspended all voter-registration efforts after the law took effect.
“We are really delighted,” said Deirdre MacNab, president of the League of Women Voters. “It knocks out the poor parts of an unreasonable and unconstitutional law. Our volunteers are eager to get back to work.”
Those groups and Democrats have accused Republicans of a systematic effort to make it harder for groups to register new voters in Florida in a presidential election year.
The Scott administration said it was pleased with the decision because Hinkle upheld its accountability provisions, which include requirements for groups to register with the state and to disclose which groups signed up which voters.
But Hinkle was critical of the way the state went about enacting administrative rules, and said a new state form that warns registration agents that it is a felony to submit false information — even if the agent doesn’t know it is false — “is just wrong.”
As the state lost this legal fight, it faces another likely legal challenge over its efforts to rid the voter rolls of noncitizens.
The state has identified nearly 2,700 potential noncitizens on the voter rolls by comparing the elections database with citizenship data kept by the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
In Tampa on Thursday, Scott defended efforts to purge the rolls of noncitizens. “We want to make sure that people register to vote,” Scott said, “but we don’t want people voting in elections [who] aren’t entitled to vote.”
A coalition of voter-advocacy and liberal-leaning groups have sent a letter to Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner, demanding that the state cease the electronic hunt for noncitizens. They have threatened to sue the state if it doesn’t stop the practice.
The groups contend that the federal National Voter Registration Act forbids programs to “systematically remove ineligible voters” within 90 days of a federal election (the next one in Florida is Aug. 14).
“We disagree with their interpretation,” said Detzner spokesman Chris Cate. But the agency has not formally responded to the groups’ letter.
The federal law says states can purge voter rolls of noncitizens if it is “provided by state law,” but an attorney for the Advancement Projects, one of the groups that petitioned Detzner, said that applies only to felons or people who have been judged mentally incapacitated — not potential noncitizens, attorney Lida Rodriguez-Taseff said.
State officials have said that as many as 180,000 noncitizens may be on the voter rolls.
On Thursday, Detzner called on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to open up its citizen database to Florida to make it easier to track ineligible voters.
“I have a duty to ensure Florida’s voter registration rolls are current and accurate,” Detzner wrote to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano.
Herald/Times staff writer Alexandra Zayas contributed to this report. Steve Bousquet can be reached at bousquet@tampabay.com or 850-224-7263.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/31/v-print/2826067/federal-judge-strikes-down-part.html#storylink=cpy

County elections chiefs to state: We won’t resume voter purge program

By Marc Caputo
mcaputo@MiamiHerald.com
Posted on Fri, Jun. 08, 2012 

Florida’s noncitizen voter purge looks like it’s all but over.

  

Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner defends Florida's decision to pursue its effort to remove ineligible voters from the state's voter rolls, saying the credibility of Florida's election system is at stake. He thinks the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is violating federal law by denying access to an immigration database that could help identify noncitizens illegally registered to vote in Florida. The League of Women Voters of Florida expresses its concern over the voter purge effort, saying it wants to make sure eligible voters are not inappropriately removed from voter rolls. The federal government wants Florida to stop the effort, but the state disagrees and is still asking for access to the database.

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 Secretary of State Ken Detzner says he hopes to get the supervisors to reverse course by working more closely with them. His effort has also inspired a noncitizen voter-purge movement in North Carolina, whose secretary of state Detzner plans to speak with on Friday. And while the Florida purge has halted, the fight between the state and the feds has just begun now that the Justice Department demanded last week that the state cease the purge due to two federal voting laws. Detzner said the U.S. government didn’t just get the law wrong, it’s harming the state’s efforts to remove ineligible voters by refusing to provide Florida access to a citizenship and immigration database maintained by the Department of Homeland Security.
“We need to do a better job,” Detzner acknowledged. But we can’t do a better job. And the reason is Homeland Security has pushed us back.”
Detzner, whose office has been requesting access to the database since October, has asked to sit down with Homeland Security to meet its demands and get access to the database. That way, the state could produce a more accurate and easy-to-check list for elections supervisors, he said. Without access to the federal database, the state matched its voter rolls with a Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles database that contains some citizenship information gathered when someone gets a state-issued ID.
But that database isn’t updated when a person becomes a citizen. So many people became U.S. citizens and then lawfully registered to vote — but they can look like noncitizen voters when the elections department compares the motor-vehicle database against. To get around the problem, DHSMV has asked the federal government to give it updated citizenship information.
That would make Miami-Dade Election Supervisor Penelope Townsley feel more comfortable. She said in a written letter last week that she was concerned the list was unreliable and was “only as good as the last time the voter made contact with the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.”
Miami-Dade has determined that 514 people on the list are citizens. About 14 are noncitizens. At least two have voted and have had their names forwarded to the State Attorney’s Office for investigation.
Townsley faulted the state for producing a list of about 1,600 voters that had no backup information and that contained duplicate IDs and the names of already removed voters, including three dead people.
“I find the state’s Non-Citizens Match list to be unreliable and insufficient, on its own,” Townsley said.
Still, if people respond to her office by telling it they’re noncitizens, they’ll be removed. But, for now, Townsley’s doing no more. Had she not halted the process, those potential noncitizens who had not responded to the certified letters sent by her office would have been removed from the rolls within about 60 days.
Now, those who do not respond to the letters will remain on the rolls.
Collier County has adopted the same policy as Miami-Dade, a spokesman said. Collier has removed 10 people from the rolls.
Democratic, liberal and minority-rights groups have expressed concern with the fact that 87 percent of those on the potential noncitizens list are minorities.
Meantime, conservative tea party groups have started to support Gov. Rick Scott’s administration and Detzner. Some are starting to visit local elections supervisors to make sure the noncitizen checks continue or restart. “We’re going to keep the pressure on, all over the state,” said Billie Tucker, co-founder of the First Coast Tea Party in Jacksonville. “We want noncitizen voters prosecuted. We don’t know how many are out there.”
Critics of the state’s program said they were concerned the program put the burden of proof on voters, the overwhelming number of whom so far have been shown to be lawful citizens.
The Department of Justice last week said the state’s purge came too late. Under a federal law commonly known called “motor voter,” state purges must end 90 days before a federal election — May 16 this year. (The Florida state primary is Aug. 14.)
DOJ also said the Voting Rights Act of 1965 required the state to get permission for the purge.
But Detzner disagreed. He said in a response Wednesday that the federal government had already given the state permission for noncitizen voter purges in the past. And, he said, the 90-day no-purge rule only applies to programs that remove once-eligible voters who become ineligible.
Since noncitizens have never been eligible to vote, they can be systematically identified and removed at any time, Detzner said in his letter. He also asked the DOJ to answer by Monday questions about removing noncitizen voters and whether Homeland Security should cough up its database.
“I can get Penelope Townsley and the other supervisors where they want to be,” Detzner said. “I’m an eternal optimist.”

Ann Romney campaigns in Miami

Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann, visited Miami to chat with a group of Hispanic women at a local restaurant.

Posted on Tuesday, 06.05.12

Ann Romney, center, recieves a MS t-shirt from Alberto Gonzalez during a campaign event Tuesday, June 5, 2012, at Islas Canarias restaurant in Miami. Peter Andrew Bosch / Miami Herald Staff

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/05/2834593/ann-romney-campaigns-in-miami.html#storylink=cpy

dguzman@MiamiHerald.com

Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann, dropped by the Islas Canarias restaurant on Tuesday to talk to local Republican women, weaving a message that was both personal and political to a partisan crowd of supporters.
The women arrived at the Cuban restaurant near Southwest 137th Avenue and Coral Way to show support for the Republican presidential contender, some wearing Romney campaign stickers on their lapels. Some wore T-shirts sporting the campaign slogan “Believe in America.”
Romney arrived at 2:15 p.m. and was escorted to the dining hall adjacent to the restaurant, where she commended the mothers in the room before beginning an informal speech. She addressed about 50 women of all ages, speaking about her well-documented struggles with multiple sclerosis and cancer, her role as a mother, and what it’s like to be the wife of the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee.
Ann credited her strength amid health troubles to the support of her husband. “He was the one that gave me hope,” she said. “You want someone like that with good character who will do the right thing at the right time.”
She spoke proudly of her role as a mother of five and grandmother of eighteen — a job she says her husband sees as more important than what he does.
The remark, which drew warm applause, was a reminder of the controversy last April when Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen criticized Ann Romney as a stay-at-home mother in a CNN appearance.
In her 20-minute speech, Ann Romney echoed her husband’s main talking points on the campaign trail. “We care about bringing back a strong economic vitality,” she told the crowd.

Ann Romney speaks at a campaign event Tuesday, June 5, 2012, at Islas Canarias restaurant in Miami. Peter Andrew Bosch / Miami Herald Staff

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The visit to Miami is no surprise. Romney and President Barack Obama have made frequent trips to court Hispanic voters in Florida, one of several swing states in this year’s presidential race.
Romney ended her chat by individually greeting each of the women who came to support her. The conversation inside Islas Canarias after the event was less about politics and more about the charisma and style of the potential first lady.
Nancy Andrade, who owns the restaurant, said she was thrilled to have Ann Romney “talking issues, woman to woman.”
The event was organized by State Sen. Anitere Flores, R-Miami, who later tweeted a photo of her and Romney at the restaurant with the headline: “Introducing the future First Lady of the United States: Ann Romney.”