Politics
Election 2012: Florida – Voter rights restored to naturalized Citizens
Also, Secretary of State Ken Detzner will instruct elections supervisors to restore any voters who were removed if it can’t be confirmed that they aren’t citizens; send a letter to everyone who was previously told they may not be eligible to vote and inform them that they are still registered, unless it’s confirmed that they aren’t citizens; not to conclude that the presence of a name on the list determines voter ineligibility; and not to force anyone on the list to use a provisional ballot.
The list has become the subject of several lawsuits, including one by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Scott, who was elected in 2010, initiated a push last year to have Florida election officials look for non-U.S. citizens on the voter rolls. That resulted in the state comparing driver’s license information with voter registration data to come up with more than 180,000 people suspected of being ineligible to vote.
Then in April, the state distributed to county election supervisors a smaller list of more than 2,600 names that state officials said had been reviewed further. The supervisors have final say over whether to remove a voter from the rolls.
Many county election officials, however, began raising questions about the accuracy of the list when more than 500 voters turned out to be citizens. Most supervisors halted any further work on the state list although two counties, Collier and Lee, did not suspend work on the list and removed voters from the rolls.
The state subsequently reached an agreement with the federal government to check the list against an immigration database.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.
