taosplaza.com

It's all about Florida this week, again. Republican Gov. Rick Scott—through his hand-picked Secretary of State Ken Detzner—told the Department of Justice that it could pound sand on its demand that the state stop purging voters from its registrations rolls. The Justice Department, they say, "doesn’t understand two federal voting laws at the heart of the dispute and was protecting potentially illegal voters more than legal ones."

In tone and substance, the letter all but dares the Justice Department to sue Florida for allegedly violating the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), nicknamed “motor voter.”

They will probably get their wish.

There are two pieces of good news out of Florida, however. First the elected folks in charge of actually conducting elections in Florida, the 67 county elections supervisors, have revolted and will not remove any voter from the registration rolls on the basis of the list provided by the state. Additionally, a federal judge this week blocked a provision of the state's new, highly restrictive omnibus voter suppression law. In this case, it was the restrictions voter registration organizations, like the League of Women voters. These groups had stopped registering new voters, but with this injunction they are back on the job.

Rick Scott says all this is to "make sure that the other individuals that are voting have a right to vote." Which is, of course, bullshit. It's about preventing as many people as possible from voting and trying to steal an election. Because voter fraud in Florida is close to non-existent, as it is in every other state.

Ion Sancho, the 24-year veteran election supervisor in Leon County, said the voter database has allowed local election officials to catch potential fraud before it occurs. New registrations are checked by the state against other state records to ensure that the person actually exists before the registration is official.
Fraud, he 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.

For more of the week's news, make the jump below the fold.

Posted: 2012-06-09 16:00:05

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