Republican Election Strategy in Florida: Purge Legitimate Voters

From [HERE] Once again Florida is trying to purge voter rolls of people who shouldn’t be allowed to vote. And, once again, there are questions about the validity and fairness of the proposed purge.

In 2000, Florida officials mistakenly threw thousands of eligible voters off the rolls after incorrectly determining they were felons. There were accusations at the time that the state government, which firmly was in Republican hands, was targeting voters likely to vote Democratic.

This time the state has asked elections supervisors to purge their lists of people ineligible to vote because they are not U.S. citizens. The list contains up to 180,000 names.

Elections supervisors, most of whom are elected at the county level and have ultimately authority to decide who stays on the county rolls, said at an annual meeting this month that they have doubts about the accuracy of the state’s list. One complaint is that the state tried to match voting records to driver license records that were out of date.

“We don’t have confidence in the validity of the information,” St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections Gertrude Walker told The Post’s Dara Kam.

The state asked supervisors to request that voters on the list provide proof of their citizenship. But some supervisors, including Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher, so far have declined to do so.

Pasco County Elections Supervisor Brian Corley said the state should have released its list of possible noncitizens earlier and not just weeks before the August primaries.

And he referred to the possibility that some could see the list as a way to put obstacles in the way of Hispanic immigrants who might be likely to vote for Democrats.

“It’s not about laying blame,” he said, “but we’re the ones dealing with angry voters and the perception of being partisan and racist.”

But Florida’s Secretary of State Ken Detzner, a Gov. Scott appointee, said the state is supposed to ensure that only eligible voters participate. “I’m not politicizing anything,” he said. “It’s a felony for somebody to register to vote if they are a noncitizen. My job is to make sure the credibility of our election system remains intact.”