Pantsless Progressive

The state of Florida has backed down in their attempts to purge voter-rolls of suspected non-citizens. In the settlement of a lawsuit with civil rights organizations, Florida has basically rolled back the entire voter purge, including their initial list of 2,600 ‘potential non-citizens,’ which ended up netting exactly one non-citizen voter, out of the 8.3 million who participated in the 2008 election there.

As per the settlement, Florida will restore to the voter rolls anyone on that 2,600-strong list of ‘potential non-citizens’ who might have been removed. If the county supervisor of Elections cannot confirm their non-citizen status in the recently acquired SAVE database from the Department of Homeland Security, their voting rights will be restored.

In addition, everyone from that list who received a letter stating that they may not be eligible to vote will now receive a new letter, stating that they are registered. The only exceptions to this will be those confirmed non-citizens, of which we so far have 1, though Secretary of State Ken Detzner claims that ‘several’ are being investigated.

Florida Essentially Gives Up on Voter Purge Efforts | Firedoglake