TALLAHASSEE — Florida's county election supervisors are frustrated and dismayed by the state's latest effort to strip some suspected noncitizens from the voter rolls less than six weeks before a presidential election.
The second voter purge, a joint effort by the state and counties that unofficially began Wednesday, is not off to a much better start than the first one.
Some county elections officials say they are receiving names of people whom they have already removed from the rolls because they have admitted they are not U.S. citizens.
There's also a matter of timing. With 39 days until Election Day, local officials say they can't comply with notice requirements before removing voters, meaning some noncitizens could cast ballots in Florida, the situation Gov. Rick Scott wanted most to avoid.
The state flagged 198 voters of questionable U.S. citizenship by comparing a state database of drivers with a federal citizenship database at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The state released a list showing 38 of them have voted in elections, at least two of them in the Aug. 14 primary. (Earlier, the state said 39 people on the list had voted.)
The new list of names went public Wednesday, and backup do ents are being sent through the U.S. mail to counties, who will get it in the coming days and begin tracking down people of questionable citizenship as they continue to prepare for the Nov. 6 general election.
Most people on the new list are in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Bay counties. All are a subset of an earlier list of about 2,600 suspected noncitizen voters that the state released in May.
In Orlando, Orange County elections chief Bill Cowles sees a redundancy: Five of 12 su ious Orange voters on his new list have already been removed from the rolls after signing a do ent admitting they lacked U.S. citizenship.
"These people already signed the paperwork from the first go-round," Cowles said.
That first list was fraught with legal and political problems. The state suspended its purge effort of suspected noncitizens after elections officials discovered many were U.S. citizens, and opted to wait until it obtained access to the Homeland Security data.
Now, some officials wonder about the new list.
"We're on hold," said Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher. "When we get the backup do entation, we'll make a determination as to whether it's credible. It wasn't credible last time."
In Broward County, where 23 voters are listed as potential noncitizens, elections official Mary Cooney said there's not enough time to complete the removal process before the Nov. 6 election.
"While some individuals may submit do entation to remove themselves, the election would occur before . . . the process would be completed," Cooney said.
State elections spokesman Chris Cate said Florida has a high level of confidence that all 198 people on the list are not U.S. citizens. He said the purge effort would resume after the election, with other groups of voters being reviewed.