No point in writing a lede. Think Progress says it very well:
Florida has no history of mass voter fraud. It does have a history, however, of mass voter disenfranchisement. By one estimate, 7000 Florida voters were wrongfully removed from the voter rolls for the 2000 presidential election — 13 times George W. Bush’s margin of victory in that state after the Supreme Court halted the post-election recount.
With history as his guide, Gov. Rick Scott has compiled a ginormous list of “ineligible” voters, a list so inaccurate that “his former Secretary of State, Kurt Browning… resigned in February after struggling to find reliable data, stating “We were not confident enough about the information for this secretary to hang his hat on it.”
in Miami-Dade county alone, 1638 people were flagged by the state as “non-citizens.” Already, 359 people on the list have provided the county with proof of citizenship and 26 people were identified as U.S. citizens directly by the county. The remaining 1200 have simply not responded to the letter informing them of their purported ineligibility. Similar problems have been identified in Polk County and Broward County.
Eligible voters will be disenfranchised.
On or about June 9, anyone who hasn’t responded to the ominous and legalistic letter informing them of their purported ineligibility will be removed from the rolls. Some eligible voters won’t have been able to respond by that time due to travel, work obligations, family obligations or confusion as to the purpose of the letter. Some will forget to open it. Others may have moved.
And the targeted voters political leanings? A study by the Miami Herald finds:
MIAMI — Hispanic, Democratic and independent-minded voters are the most likely to be targeted in a state hunt to remove thousands of noncitizens from Florida’s voting rolls, aMiami Herald computer analysis of elections records has found.
Whites and Republicans are disproportionately the least-likely to face the threat of removal, the analysis of a list of more than 2,600 potential noncitizens shows. The list was first compiled by the state and furnished to county election supervisors and then the Herald.
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despicable,
If I got a letter from my town’s voter commission saying I was ineligible, I’d be in their face faster than a phone call waving a certified copy of my birth certificate or my US Passport. What about those 1,200 non-responders? Are they real? Have they moved? Don’t they care? Are they dead?
Hey, maybe there ARE 1,200 illegible names on the list. Isn’t that possible? We can’t try to correct that? (rhetorical…I already know the progressive response.)
I’d like to know if ANYONE puts up a big stink about being on the list. Just because there’s a list is not evidence that anyone is being disenfranchised. Mistakes are also correctable. If someone turns up to vote who is on the list, have them cast a provisional ballot, then return with proof of citizenship. Illegally casting an uncontested ballot is forever.
And how stupid is it to say that there are more Hispanics in south Florida on an ineligible list? Aren’t odds that there are many more Hispanic illegal immigrants than non-Hispanic? This is the same Bizarro World logic that drives “disparate impact” measurements.
It’s possible. But quite unlikely.
I say it’s very likely. Miami-Dade has 2.5 million residents. 1,200 is 0.05%. That’s an accuracy rate of 99.95%.
Would that we do anything with 99% accuracy in our lives.
I just think that is outrageous. Why should someone have to go to the trouble of proving their citizenship because some moron in Rick Scott’s office screwed up? Why, for example, should a 91-year-old veteran have to go through the trouble of returning to his polling place (which is probably not that easy, since the guy is 91), just because Scott wants to deliver Florida to Mitt Romney? It’s not right.
So, yes, someone has to go to the trouble of proving citizenship. That’s our personal civic responsibility. And it’s a prime responsibility of local and county jurisdictions to make their voter list accurate.
It’s Rick Scott’s responsibility to protect ALL our voting rights. That means protecting my rights from illegitimate voters.
Of course Scott is working to elect Romney. But it’s unfair to say that purging the list has a political motivation.
Do you not have a real one?
Maureen Russo responded with a copy of her passport. Is this a problem?
In a related Think Progress story :
Is this a problem? Not for Juan!
It’s amazing to me that a so-called conservative like yourself, who isn’t supposed to like big guvmint, has no problem with an incompetent state bureaucracy threatening to take away people’s right to vote because the state’s crappy databases suggested that the person might not be a citizen, so they don’t bother to actually check, but instead place the burden on the citizen to go to the trouble of proving citizenship. It’s appalling.
David, I’m equally as worried about MY being disenfranchised by an ineligible vote. That’s just as unconscionable as screwing up a valid US citizen’s registration. That should be appalling to you, too, why isn’t it?
Mathematically and morally, an illegally cast vote is WORSE than the hassle of a provisional ballot. The screwed-up county list can be corrected, pre- and post-election. An illegally cast vote cannot.
The burden SHOULD be on the citizen.
that I disagree with your definition of “disenfranchisement.” Trying to keep an accurate list but screwing up 0.05% of voter registration, all of it correctable, is not disenfranchisement.
Not giving a s**t about who’s allowed to vote is disenfranchisement, and is just as criminal as a poll tax.
Because rich people like yourself already have a lot of political advantages, such as being able to buy favors with large donations. So if a few impoverished non-citizens, like the guys who used to cut Romney’s grass, get to vote even though they technically shouldn’t, it’s nowhere near as harmful to democracy as the disproportionate influence of the rich on politics (which situation would be be further exacerbated a poll tax).
I was right in an earlier post. Progressive don’t give a s**t. Not a US citizen, step right this way.
…everyone who disagrees with you gets lumped into “the rich”, the 1%, the politically connected donor.
I’m not rich, and, really, how much clout do you think I have in blue Massachusetts? And did you think I supported a poll tax? Sounds like it.
of disenfranchise means to deprive someone of the right to vote. You can argue that the potential for someone to vote ineligibly decreases the value of your vote, but it doesn’t disenfranchise you.
Moreover, you dichotomy is false: voter fraud is non-existent; voter suppression is. What you really mean is that you’d rather disenfranchise someone than trust the system that works.
There was another shepherd that reminds me of you: the boy who cried wolf.
I get to vote so in the strict sense I’m not disenfranchised. I’m nullified.
Voter fraud prevention and voter empowerment are not mutually exclusive. We can have both. But first you have to tell me what sort of proof-of-eligibility voter registration procedure would be acceptable to you yet assure me of a minimum of ineligible enrollment. Right now, there’s no protection whatsoever.
And please, send me some links that document voter suppression in FL 2000, or Ohio 2004, or 2008 and 2010. Besides the New Black Panther Party’s volunteer work and shrieking from DailyKos.
in alternatives to Voter ID and examples of voter suppression, visit the Brennan Center.
I’ll get back to you on the other part. Lunch is over.
suppression. There are other sources, but this looked the most reliable. Others, like the People For the American Way, have stuff with sourcing.
http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/vote2000/report/exesum.htm
just like being absolutely sure, again and again, that the president of the United States is an american citizen.
the impeccable accuracy with which the Florida Elections Commission conducts itself, right?
My mother, a registered lifelong Democrat, lived in Florida as she became elderly. Because she wasn’t driving, she let her license lapse. Because she wasn’t traveling, she didn’t have an up-to-date passport. Because she had moved a few times in her last years I don’t imagine she still had 88-year old birth certificate, if she ever had it. So, because she didn’t have a day-to-day need for anything proving her citizenship, she didn’t have anything.
Had she gotten the letter from the honorable Rick Scott she probably wouldn’t have known quite what to do and surely wouldn’t have gone to the expense and effort to get a lawyer, etc. to get something to prove her citizenship.
The result? One less Democratic vote. Period. No muss, no fuss, and on to the next and the next and the next and the next…. And before ya know, Florida goes to Bush, oops, I mean Romney.
I’m glad she’s not around to deal with this.
doesn’t travel and may have lost their birth certificate are Democrats? Sounds like it could be anyone from any party.
The point is that Democrats ARE in the majority in the targeted population. That’s already been shown in the various reports of Florida demographics, such as the the study cited in the thread-starter.
Hence, most of the disenfranchised voters are Democrats.
… aren’t something to rest the workings of democracy upon.
Assuming a perfectly working system, with all the right motivations, checks and balances and one that is adequately funded we would surmise such a blanket disenfranchisement covering anyone of any party.
But the assumption of the purge rests on the imperfections of the underlying administration of the electoral system: if we could have a system that was working well, adequately funded, with checks, balances and all the right motivations in place, a working theory of conservative theology, Catholics call it subsidiarity (see Ryan, Paul) would apply such perfections to the underlying system and not the remedy for the systems faults. Indeed, some true conservatives might argue that the underlying imperfections in the electoral system actively prevent any perfection, or indeed, efficacy, in the remedy… Rank political insects simply see cracks in the system to exploit.
Rick Scott, and the Florida GOP, are, in essence, standing on the deck of a sinking ship asking to see passengers boarding passes before letting them on the lifeboats.
Why make this into an ecclesiastical debate? The Florida rolls seem pretty accurate (99.95%) but it is the dual duty of state, county, and local election commission to ensure the accuracy of their lists AND not disenfranchise anyone.
What you label as “rank political instincts,” from which Democrats are not exactly immune, is your own rank political opinion, complete with unhinged lifeboat analogies.
Republicans/conservatives want everyone who is eligible to register and vote, but they also want an accurate list.
Democrats, it seems to me for various posts here, don’t give a s**t — let anyone vote! The underlying motivation? Ineligible voters will likely vote Democrat?
I can accept the fact that you want all eligible voters to vote, but the GOP has been running voter suppression programs for decades.
And if they don’t do their jobs? Well, sucks for you disenfranchised voter.
I can’t believe they know how accurate the voter rolls are. Even assuming they are 99% accurate, that would leave 190,000 potential voters disenfranchised. In the 2000 election, that number could have been decisive. At 95% accuracy, that would be almost a million voters disenfranchised. Percentages don’t vote. People do.
You can’t prove, or disprove, a dispositive.
Out of curiosity, why do you think she could not have secured a copy of her birth certificate?
Having once registered to vote, why should she be required to re-register? (Obtaining a copy of a birth certificate may cost money, btw – why should she be subject to such a fee? Aren’t poll taxes illegal now?)
…which should be on the state to prove disqualification as opposed to the voter to prove qualification. I know I have made favorable comments with respect to voter ID in the past, but I think at this point any new legislation should not be in effect until the 2014 elections to allow voters ample time to comply.