Is removing eligible voters from voting rolls voter fraud?
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By Judd Legum on May 26, 2012 at 11:00 am
According to the Broward County Supervisor of Elections, eligible voters will be removed from the voting rolls as a result of the massive voter purge ordered by Governor Rick Scott. “It will happen,” Mary Cooney, a spokeswoman for the Broward County Supervisor of Elections, told ThinkProgress.
Late last year, Governor Scott ordered his Secretary of State, Kurt Browning to “to identify and remove non-U.S. citizens from the voter rolls.” Browning could not get access to reliable citizenship data. So Scott urged election officials to identify non-U.S. citizens by comparing data from the state motor vehicle administration with the voting file.
That process produced a massive list of 182,000 names, which Browning considered unreliable. The Fair Elections Legal Network, which is challenging the purge, noted that database matching is “notoriously unreliable” and “data entry errors, similar-sounding names, and changing information can all produce false matches.” Further, some voters may have naturalized since their driver’s license information was collected.
Browning resigned in February. But Scott has pressed forward with his efforts to purge voters from the rolls based on the dubious list. Here’s the letter Maureen Russo, aU.S. citizen and registered voter in Florida for the last 40 years, recieved two weeks ago:
In Broward County 259 people recieved letters just like the one addressed to Maureen above, according to the Broward County Supervisor of Elections. So far only 7 (including Maureen) have responded to the ominous and legalistic letter. Five of the responses included proof of citizenship.
If the other 252 people don’t respond within 30 of recieving the letter — a deadline that is rapidly approaching — they will be summarily removed from the voting roles. Cooney, the Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman, says some of those who are purged under this “very new” process will “be eligible” but will have to be removed from the rolls anyway.
Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) and other Democratic members of the Florida Congressional delegation — as well as a coalition of voter protection groups — have called on Scott to “immediately suspend” the voting purge since the lists of ineligible voters has proven extremely unreliable.
Top Opinion
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abycinnamon BN-1 2012/05/28 05:58:40Yes
+5the usual and customary republican attempt to remove likely (but legal) democratic voters from the rolls. It's despicable - and illegal - but they do it anyway. and then they scream about non issues like acorn. amazing. and people buy it. mind boggling.
Another study, by Barnard College political scientist Lori Minnite, similarly concluded that voter fraud is "extremely rare." The Brennan Center also showed that the sort of strict rules advocated by Republicans in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere would disenfranchise thousands of people -- usually the poor, elderly and minorities.
So says the New York Times in its lead editorial this morning, whose title I have used for this post. The editorial begins with the recent report by the Brennan Center which warned of 5 million voters in 14 states controlled by Republicans who might be excluded by new actions and gubernatorial actions. One week ago the paper had a front page story on the study, about which I wrote here. It is good to see the nation's newspaper of record taking a strong position on this topic.
The editorial calls out the dishonesty of the Republicans demanding such measures, noting
the Republicans passing these laws never acknowledge their real purpose, which is to turn away from the polls people who are more likely to vote Democratic, particularly the young, the poor, the elderly and minorities.
There are specific examples provided to support the editorial's position.
For example, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, whom as the article notes is the real author of the anti-immigrant law in Arizona, cited 221 cases of voter "...
So says the New York Times in its lead editorial this morning, whose title I have used for this post. The editorial begins with the recent report by the Brennan Center which warned of 5 million voters in 14 states controlled by Republicans who might be excluded by new actions and gubernatorial actions. One week ago the paper had a front page story on the study, about which I wrote here. It is good to see the nation's newspaper of record taking a strong position on this topic.
The editorial calls out the dishonesty of the Republicans demanding such measures, noting
the Republicans passing these laws never acknowledge their real purpose, which is to turn away from the polls people who are more likely to vote Democratic, particularly the young, the poor, the elderly and minorities.
There are specific examples provided to support the editorial's position.
For example, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, whom as the article notes is the real author of the anti-immigrant law in Arizona, cited 221 cases of voter "fraud" since 1997. Given that the starting date was an odd-numbered year, from 1997 through 2010, the elections before the law was passed, that comes out to an average of less than 16 supposed fraudulent votes per year, or as the editorial notes, "an infinitesimal percentage."
But the Times examined the cases in question and found
almost all were honest mistakes: a parent trying to vote for a student away at college, or
Purging of voter registration rolls is the JOB of the sec of state that is why they are elected and voters elect the SoS so they know what the person will or will not do when in office.
it is the VOTERS responsibility to make sure they have an updated registration if the VOTER can't see fit to make necessary changes or to vote often enough to stay on the rolls then its the VOTERS problem. the STATE is only responsible to follow the law.
If you do not partisapate in an election for a specific number of years
If you move out of one precinct and into another (and that could be just a few blocks difference)
If you leave or vote in a different state
Not having the correct name on teh rolls (just a middle name difference or a name change do to marriage or divorce)
If you had been convicted of a crime and in jail and you did not get your sentence ajudicated so your privilege back
AND the list goes on and on and each state has some restrictions.
A privilege like voting should NOT be easy to obtain. Its an important responsibility and at the very least the people who want to should be willing and able to make sure they are correctly registered to take part
We went through the same rigamarow in my state when they were trying to clean up the rolls. All the claims about "OH thousands of peopel will lose their ability to vote" never happened. what did happen was over 200 people who had been DEAD for a number of years were removed a few who had moved out of state and some actual illegal immigrants. The other thing taht happened is people took the 5 minutes it takes to go down and register for teh first time and to varrify they were properly registered.
Again if voting is so important to someone then they should be willing to make sure they are properly registered to do so and if they can't take 5 or 10 minutes out of tehir day for such then maybe they shouldn't be voting in the first place as I can not see how they would have enough time or care to research who they are even voting for.
Again voting is a privilege in this country not a right and if its important to a person they should first and formost be willing to do what it takes to partisapate and second be offended if even 0.1% of the population is abusing that privilege.
and as the sources state voter fraud is very hard to track because its not often pursued as a crime and thus does not make it into the records used in the statistical annyalsis
http://www.nationalreview.com...
The republicans in my state are trying to one up them by redistricting the entire state. Even the republicans are forced to admit that it would favor their party. This is Un-American and should be considered unconstitutional.
When I was in S. Florida during the 2000 election, there were people interviewed on T.V with translators telling how they were loaded on buses to vote, Democrat of course. I always wondered why that didn't make the national news. Oh, they admitted they had just arrived from South America!
More reason for voter registration containing photograph and fingerprint.