As Election Nears...GOP voter purge surgess

[clambake]

http://cltampa.com/dailyloaf/archive...e#.T8e5Lb-iszC

This whole thing is a big steaming pile of . No wonder WC wants to swallow it whole.

[Nbadan]

Justice Department Demands Florida Stop Purging Voter Rolls

The Justice Department sent a letter to Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner Thursday evening demanding the state cease purging its voting rolls because the process it is using has not been cleared under the Voting Rights Act, TPM has learned.

DOJ also said that Florida’s voter roll purge violated the National Voter Registration Act, which stipulates that voter roll maintenance should have ceased 90 days before an election, which given Florida’s August 14 primary, meant May 16.

Five of Florida’s counties are subject to the Voting Rights Act, but the state never sought permission from either the Justice Department or a federal court to implement its voter roll maintenance program. Florida officials said they were trying to remove non-citizens from the voting rolls, but a flawed process led to several U.S. citizens being asked to prove their citizenship status or be kicked off the rolls.

Six members of Congress wrote Gov. Rick Scott earlier this week demanding that he stop purging the state’s voting rolls since the process improperly flagged numerous individuals who were eligible to vote.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmem...oter_rolls.php

Florida Department of State spokesman Chris Cate responds in a statement to ThinkProgress:

We just received the letter from DOJ this evening, and haven’t had a chance to thoroughly review it. Bottom line is we are firmly committed to doing the right thing and preventing ineligible voters from being able to cast a ballot.
Read more: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmem...oter_rolls.php

[Yonivore]

Justice Department Demands Florida Stop Purging Voter Rolls

Because dead and illegal voters will be crucial to Obama's re-election chances.

[boutons_deux]

"Because dead and illegal voters will be crucial to Obama's re-election chances."

because black, ethnic, poor, disabled, intimidated, student legit citizens' and residents' votes will be crucial to defeating Gecko.

[boutons_deux]

got any "dead voter" numbers, Pussy Eater? or you just lying like "voter fraud" liars have been doing for years?

"Back in 2000, 12,000 eligible voters - a number twenty-two times larger than George W. Bush’s 537 vote triumph over Al Gore - were wrongly identified as convicted felons and purged from the voting rolls in Florida, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. African Americans, who favored Gore over Bush by 86 points, accounted for 11 percent of the state’s electorate but 41 percent of those purged. Jeb Bush attempted a repeat performance in 2004 to help his brother win reelection but was forced to back off in the face of a public outcry. Yet with another close election looming, Florida Republicans have returned to their voter-scrubbing ways.

The latest purge comes on the heels of a trio of new voting restrictions passed by Florida Republicans last year, disenfranchising 100,000 previously eligible ex-felons who'd been granted the right to vote under GOP Governor Charlie Crist in 2008; shutting down non-partisan voter registration drives; and cutting back on early voting. The measures, the effect of which will be to depress Democratic turnout in November, are similar to voting curbs passed by Republicans in more than a dozen states, on the bogus pretext of combating "voter fraud" but with the very deliberate goal of shaping the electorate to the GOP's advantage before a single vote has been cast.

Florida Republicans have taken voter suppression to a brazen extreme. After the 2010 election, Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, instructed Secretary of State Ken Browning to compile a massive database of alleged "non-citizen" voters. Browning resigned in February rather than implement Scott’s plan, saying "we were not confident enough about the information for this secretary to hang his hat on it."

But in early May his successor, Ken Detzner, a former beer-industry lobbyist, announced a list of 182,000 suspected non-citizens to be removed from the voting rolls, along with 50,000 apparently dead voters. (Seven thousand alleged felons had already been scrubbed from the rolls in the first four months of 2012). On May 8, the state mailed out a first batch of 2,600 letters to Florida residents informing them, "you are not a United States citizen; however you are registered to vote." If the recipients do not reply within thirty days and affirm their U.S. citizenship, they will be dropped from the voter rolls.

The first batch of names was riddled with inaccuracies. For example, as the progressive blog Think Progress noted, "an excess of 20 percent of the voters flagged as 'non-citizens' in Miami-Dade are, in fact, citizens. And the actual number may be much higher." If this ratio holds for the rest of the names on the non-citizens list, more than 35,000 eligible voters could be disenfranchised. Those alleged non-citizens have already included a 91-year-old World War II veteran who’s voted since he was 18 and a 60-year-old kennel owner who has voted in the state for four decades. It’s impossible to quantify how many eligible voters will be scrubbed from the rolls if they’ve moved, aren’t home, don’t have ready access to citizenship do ents, or won’t bother to reply to the menacing letter.

"There are lots of things that can go wrong when you have these large-scale systematic purges," says Myrna Perez, senior counsel in the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice. "They need to be done really carefully, with a lot of transparency, well in advance of the election. And this is too close." Florida Republicans are following the lead of GOP secretaries of state in places like Colorado and New Mexico, who’ve made outlandish and unsubstantiated claims about non-citizens voting based on sketchy data, bad methodology, and anti-immigrant sentiment."

http://readersupportednews.org/opini...to-the-extreme

Repugs, self-styled lovers of freedom and democracy, ing hard their fellow citizens. Repugs stealing FL in 2012, just like they did in 2000 and in OH in 2004.

[ChumpDumper]

Because dead and illegal voters will be crucial to Obama's re-election chances.

None of that made up vote fraud bull has ever been proved, especially by the Bush administration's five year effort to find it.

Maybe you could give us a reason the man in the OP would be flagged as a noncitizen.

[scott]

None of that made up vote fraud bull has ever been proved, especially by the Bush administration's five year effort to find it.

Maybe you could give us a reason the man in the OP would be flagged as a noncitizen.

He's old enough to be dead?

[ChumpDumper]

i was reading that florida estimates 180,000 illegal immigrants are registered to vote in the state at minimum.

Which estimate is that? The DMV one that department admits is flawed and out of date?

[boutons_deux]

"i was reading"

where?

If true, says that Repug FL government is comically incompetent.

[ChumpDumper]

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/1...t-targets.html

"The state’s Division of Elections says it initially identified roughly 180,000 potential noncitizens by performing a search of a computer database that doesn’t have the most-updated information."

Just as I said.

And why did the man in the OP get flagged?

[boutons_deux]

"state’s Division of Elections"

yep, FL govt is hard-core Repug, so of course the state Division of Elections will be compromised politically, just like every govt office in TX.

[boutons_deux]

In Texas, 300,000 Eligible Voters Targeted In Purge

Florida voters are not the only ones who should be worried about whether their state has erroneously purged them from the list of eligible voters; the state of Texas also has a voter purge policy that erroneously targets eligible voters. The Houston Chronicle reports that, in a two year period, 300,000 eligible voters were warned that they may be removed from Texas voter rolls. Texas voter registration rates are already among the lowest in the nation, and one out of every 10 Texas voters’ registration is currently suspended. The almost 1.5 million voters who are suspended could be purged if they fail to vote in two consecutive general elections.

Texas has responded to state and federal laws that require voter rolls be reviewed to remove duplicates and ineligible voters by creating an error riddled process:

[A]cross Texas, such “removals” rely on outdated computer programs, faulty procedures and voter responses to generic form letters, often resulting in the wrong people being sent cancellation notices, including new homeowners, college students, Texans who work abroad and folks with common names, a Chronicle review of cancellations shows….

[E]ach year thousands of voters receive requests to verify voter information or be cancelled because they share the same name as a voter who died, got convicted of a crime or claimed to be a non-citizen to avoid jury duty. Those voters receive form letters generated by workers in county election offices that “therefore may be more subject to error,” said Rich Parsons, a spokesman for the Secretary of State in emailed responses to the newspaper. Voters who fail to respond to form letters – or never receive them – get dropped.

In the two years between November 2008 and November 2010, over 300,000 valid voters were warned that they may be removed from Texas voter rolls. Eligible voters were threatened with removal most often because they failed to respond to generic form letters or because they were mistaken for someone else, which is even more worrisome given that there is a high incidence of voters sharing a name in Texas, particularly among Hispanics. Across Texas, 21% of voters who received purge letters later proved that they were eligible to vote.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...eted-in-purge/

Repugs "Be Messin' With Texas"

[George Gervin's Afro]

So let me get this straight..the GOP is trying to eliminate 'illegal' votes..with no record of any actually no proof any illegal vote being counted....under the guise of free and fair elections... yet the policy they put in place will undoubtedly not allow for legitimate votes to be counted..


Maybe I have been living under a rock..but has anyone ever put forth any evidence that suggests that there is/ has been voter fraud? I am not referring to registering to vote, rather actual illegal votes being counted.

[jack sommerset]

Bless your heart George. I am very proud of you. You are not discouraged that people pay little or no attention to you to the point that you feel comfortable with yourself copying and posting your own post . Kudos to you. The bible teaches us "I can do all things through him who strengthens me." You keep plugging away and one day you will get the respect you deserve. You shall not be ignored, your message is important. Now of course you need to make sense to those you are trying to reach but I am very encourage you have no quit in you. God bless

[ChumpDumper]

What part of the Bible commands people to be disingenuous s like jack?

[George Gervin's Afro]

Bless your heart George. I am very proud of you. You are not discouraged that people pay little or no attention to you to the point that you feel comfortable with yourself copying and posting your own post . Kudos to you. The bible teaches us "I can do all things through him who strengthens me." You keep plugging away and one day you will get the respect you deserve. You shall not be ignored, your message is important. Now of course you need to make sense to those you are trying to reach but I am very encourage you have no quit in you. God bless

so you (or your side) can't find any legals cases either..you're a holy piece of ..

[jack sommerset]

so you (or your side) can't find any legals cases either..you're a holy piece of ..

I forgive you for this outburst. God bless

[ChumpDumper]

I forgive you for this outburst. God bless

lol ducking the question

[ChumpDumper]

I can't help but notice you never produced any proof of the type of fraud you are talking about either.

You never will.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

What part of the Bible commands people to be disingenuous s like jack?

3rd commandment. If he really is a believer then he best watch out.

[boutons_deux]

Voter Fraud Extremely Rare In Florida: ‘More Likely To Get Hit By A Bolt Of Lightning’

According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, 178 cases of alleged voter fraud have been referred to the department since 2000. [...]

Fraud, [Ion Sancho, the 24-year veteran election supervisor in Leon County] said, simply isn’t much of an issue. “You are more likely to walk out of your office and get hit by a bolt of lightning,” he said.


http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...-data-reveals/

[scott]

Certainly this is an effective use of state funds.

[boutons_deux]

.

[boutons_deux]

30 Elected Florida Republicans Stop Rick Scott’s Voter Purge

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.”

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...s-voter-purge/

[TeyshaBlue]

30 Elected Florida Republicans Stop Rick Scott’s Voter Purge

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.”

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...s-voter-purge/

Those ing Republicans are obstructing those ing Republicans!