Florida Congressman Demands Gov. Rick Scott ‘Immediately Suspend’ Voter Purge

[KingOrfeo]

Florida Congressman Demands Gov. Rick Scott ‘Immediately Suspend’ Voter Purge.

Florida Congressman Ted Deutch (D) told ThinkProgress today that Gov. Rick Scott was engaging in a “blatant attempt to supress voter turnout.” Scott is currently involved in a massive effort to purge up to 180,000 from the voting rolls. The list, purportedly of non-citizens, has proven unreliable. Earlier this week, Seminole County Supervisor of Elections Mike Ertel, a Republican, posted a picture on Twitter of a voter on the list falsely identified as ineligible, with his passport.

Congressman Deutch said that his office has heard from several constituents who have recieved a voting ineligibility letter in error. In light of these errors, Deutch will soon send a letter to Scott demanding the purge be immediatly suspended. An excerpt:

It is out of grave concern that we write to ask for the immediate suspension of the Florida Division of Elections’ directive that county supervisors of elections purge up to 180,000 names from Florida’s voter rolls in advance of the November 2012 elections.

While we all agree that the right to vote should be reserved only to those who are eligible, any process that could strip Floridians of their voting rights should be conducted with the utmost caution and transparency, and certainly not within six months of a major federal election and within 90 days of the primary. Providing a list of names with questionable validity – created with absolutely no oversight – to county supervisors and asking that they purge their rolls will create chaotic results and further undermine Floridians’ confidence in the integrity of our elections. A rushed process will undermine both Florida and federal law requiring voter rolls to be maintained in a uniform and nondiscriminatory manner.

The letter was circulated to the entire Florida Congressional delegation and Deutch expects several of his colleagues to sign on. Deutch noted that while Florida has “no history of mass voter fraud” it does have a history of “mass voter disenfranchisement” that proceeded the presidential election in 2000.

In 1998, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris hired a private company to create a “scrub list” of duplicate registrations, deceased voters and felons prohibited from voting in Florida. The company’s list, however, was riddled with errors. One person flagged as a felon by the list was actually a Florida judge. A county elections supervisor discovered the list was unreliable when she received an erroneous letter informing her that she was a felon and could not vote. 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.

Deutch said that, in this election, “Governor Scott wants to play the role of Katherine Harris.”

African-Americans made up 88 percent of the voters removed from the rolls in the purge that preceeded the 2000 election, even though they account for only about 11 percent of Florida voters. In Florida, 93 percent of black voters cast a ballot for Al Gore.

Go Deutch! Let's not have what happened in 2000 happen ever again.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Meanwhile, the vote-suppressors are gearing up for the Wisconsin recall. Specifically, True the Vote.

 

[unregistered]

 

[richard_daily]

We Need Those Dead Votes!

You're voting this year?

 

[KingOrfeo]

We Need Those Dead Votes!

You're not going to embarrass yourself with this shit again, are you?

 

[NeverEndingMe]

OBAMA whamma babmma damma needs all the help he can muster. the regime needs for people to vote twice and the dead shall vote also!

the regime must stay in o-power, right?

 

[KingOrfeo]

More news:

HuffPo:

Latino Voters Likely To Bear Brunt Of Florida's Voter Rolls Purge

Posted: 05/17/2012 5:34 pm Updated: 05/18/2012 6:56 pm

Less than two months after a Florida effort to identify and purge ineligible voters from the state's rolls began, opponents say it seems likely to disqualify a disproportionate share of eligible Latino voters.

About 180,000 people -- a group roughly equal to the population of Tallahassee, Fla. -- are at risk of being purged from the state's voter rolls because they have been identified as possible noncitizens, the Miami Herald reported. Looking at a smaller sample of 2,600 suspect voters initially identified by the state, the newspaper found about 58 percent to be Latino. Hispanic voters constitute just 13 percent of the state's electorate, according to federal data.

Florida often grabs national attention because it's home to 11.3 million voters and wields 29 Electoral College votes. But Republican secretaries of state elsewhere, including Colorado and New Mexico, have also launched aggressive efforts to identify noncitizens on their voter rolls. Critics contend that many of these purges have relied on questionable methods and allow public officials to make inaccurate claims about the number of ineligible people who have actually obtained and used voting credentials.

ThinkProgress:

Florida Supervisor of Elections: Gov. Scott’s Voter Purge Will Remove Eligible Voters From Rolls

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.

CBS Miami:

Groups Ask Florida To Stop Voter Roll Purge

May 24, 2012 4:15 PM

MIAMI (CBSMiami) – A coalition of civil rights and voting organizations have asked the State of Florida to stop its push, directed by Governor Rick Scott, to remove non-U.S. citizens from the state’s voter rolls.

The group sent a letter to Secretary of State Ken Detzner threatening a lawsuit if Florida doesn’t stop the planned purge. The coalition said federal law bans the state from removing voters from the rolls less than 90 days before a federal election.

Crooks & Liars:

May 25, 2012 04:00 AM

Ed Schultz Brings National Attention to Florida Voter Roll Purge

By Heather

Anyone who follows this blog regularly may have already read Ken Quinnell's report on Florida Gov. Rick Scott's plan to purge 180,000 Hispanics from the voting rolls in Florida ahead of the 2012 presidential election. This Thursday evening, MSNBC's Ed Schultz thankfully decided to shine a national spotlight on the subject, hopefully before it's too late for those who have received notices from the state to do something about it.

Schultz highlighted this article from The Palm Beach Post News: Fla. Gov. started push to remove voters from rolls:

Florida's quest to identify and remove non-U.S. citizens from the voter rolls was started at the direct urging of Gov. Rick Scott, the state's former top elections official said.

Ex-Secretary of State Kurt Browning, who resigned this year, told The Associated Press that Scott asked him whether or not non-U.S. citizens were registered and if those people were voting. Browning explained to the governor during a face-to-face meeting last year that people who register and falsely claim they are citizens can be charged with a crime.

"He says to me — well, people lie," Browning recalled this week. "Yes, people do. But we have always had to err on the side of the voter."

Browning said the conversation prompted state election officials to begin working to identify non-U.S. citizens. The state's initial list — compiled by comparing driver's licenses with voter registration data — showed that as many as 182,000 registered voters were eligible to be in the country but ineligible to vote.

But Browning said he decided against telling local election supervisors right away because he wanted to make sure the information was accurate in order to avoid a "firestorm of press" and criticism. Florida then spent months trying to get access to a federal database that tracks non-U.S. citizens in the country, but the U.S. Department of Homeland Security would not allow it.

"We were not confident enough about the information for this secretary to hang his hat on it," said Browning, who resigned after the Jan. 31 presidential preference primary.

Browning said media reports earlier this year that raised questions whether non-U.S. citizens were on the rolls required the state to keep pushing ahead with the effort.

In the last few weeks, the state sent a list to county election supervisors of more than 2,600 people who have been identified as non-U.S. citizens. Supervisors have responded warily to the list and have pointed out that it has inaccuracies.

And this article from the Tampa Bay Times: Hispanics, Democrats biggest groups on Florida's list of potential noncitizen voters, analysis shows:

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, a Miami 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.

The numbers change by the day. The state's Division of Elections says it initially identified roughly 180,000 potential noncitizens by performing a search of a computer database that doesn't have the most-updated information.

About 58 percent of those identified as potential noncitizens are Hispanics, Florida's largest ethnic immigrant population. They make up just 13 percent of the overall 11.3 million active registered voters.

Those who have been flagged as potential noncitizens by the state are being contacted by county election supervisors. Many legitimate voters aren't happy with what they see as a needless hassle from a government using bad data.

Schultz followed up by bringing in Florida Congressman Ted Deutch who Think Progress spoke to about Florida Gov. Rick Scott's blatant attempt to become the state's next Katherine Harris:

<snip> [covered in the OP]

During his interview with Ed Schultz this Thursday, Deutch explained how important it was for the voters of Florida to be aware of what's happening and not to ignore the notices that are going out so they don't find themselves showing up at the polls later this year and told they're not eligible to vote once it's too late. Good on Ed Schultz for doing something to make sure those who may be disenfranchised are aware of what's going on so they can fight back against Scott's efforts.

Anyone who has friends or family in Florida needs to be spreading the word on this story now to try to prevent Republicans from being successful in stealing another presidential election. We can't afford a repeat of the Katherine Harris debacle.

The media continually talks about how close this election is going to be even though Mitt Romney's numbers with Hispanics, women, and just about every group other than old white men is in the tank and they appear to me to be setting the public up already with their arguments to justifying another stolen election if that's how things go down.

If Mitt Romney somehow wins this election, watch for the media to blame low numbers of students and Hispanics voting on low enthusiasm, rather than acknowledging Republicans did their best to make sure both groups did not have the ability to vote at all.

If the majority of our media cared about preserving our democracy in America, more of them would be doing what Schultz did here, and reporting on the massive attempts at voter disenfranchisement that are going on right now. Sadly the type of reporting we saw here from Ed Schultz is the rarity instead of the norm, and even Schultz isn't doing enough to point out all the other areas where this is happening as well.

Interesting times. Gov. Scott, you asshole, did you really think you were just going to get away with this? Did you think 2000 was already forgotten? Suck it!

 

[Dazzle1]

Its called election frauf which is how Al Franken stole his Senate Seat.

Very easy to get a voter ID Dems want illegals to vote!

 

[1fromawoodpile]

Al Franken = Douche Bag

 

[richard_daily]

Its called election frauf which is how Al Franken stole his Senate Seat.

Very easy to get a voter ID Dems want illegals to vote!

Oh really? Do you have verified examples of this?

vatican assassin claimed that he registered his dog to vote (in florida i believe), but then disappeared when asked to provide more information.

Are you a liar, like him?

 

[KingOrfeo]

The DOJ demands a stop to this:

The Justice Department sent a letter to Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner Thursday evening demanding the state cease purging its voting rolls because the process it is using has not been cleared under the Voting Rights Act, TPM has learned.

DOJ also said that Florida’s voter roll purge violated the National Voter Registration Act, which stipulates that voter roll maintenance should have ceased 90 days before an election, which given Florida’s August 14 primary, meant May 16.

Five of Florida’s counties are subject to the Voting Rights Act, but the state never sought permission from either the Justice Department or a federal court to implement its voter roll maintenance program. Florida officials said they were trying to remove non-citizens from the voting rolls, but a flawed process led to several U.S. citizens being asked to prove their citizenship status or be kicked off the rolls.

Six members of Congress wrote Gov. Rick Scott earlier this week demanding that he stop purging the state’s voting rolls since the process improperly flagged numerous individuals who were eligible to vote.

“To enable us to meet our responsibility to enforce federal law, please inform us by June 6 of the action that the State of Florida plans to take concerning the matters discussed in this letter,” Christian Herren, chief of the voting section of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, wrote in the letter obtained by TPM. “Specifically, please advise whether the State intends to cease the practice discussed above, so that the Department can determine what futher action, if any, is necessary.”

And, whaddaya know!

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked parts of Florida's new election law that places restrictions on voter registration drives, saying the provisions were harsh and impractical and imposed requirements that served little - if any - purpose.

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle ruled the League of Women Voters of Florida and other two groups challenging the provisions are likely to prevail in arguing the restrictions violate constitutional voting rights.

One of the blocked provisions requires groups or individuals signing up voters to submit their registration forms to election officials within 48 hours of collecting them. The previous law allowed up to 10 days. Others impose what the judge called "burdensome record-keeping and reporting requirements."

"Allowing responsible organizations to conduct voter-registration drives - thus making it easier for citizens to register and vote - promotes democracy," Hinkle wrote.

Deirdre Macnab, the president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, said the group wants to study the ruling before deciding whether to resume registration efforts. The ruling did not block other parts of the third-party voter registration section.

The league suspended those activities after Gov. Rick Scott signed the law last year.

"Delighted isn't a strong enough word for the way we feel," Macnab said.

"We've got volunteers who are ready," Macnab added. "It doesn't matter how hot it is this summer."

The third-party registration provisions are in one of three sections of the election law that also are being challenged in another case that's pending before a three-judge panel in Washington, D.C. The other sections reduce early voting days and require voters to cast provisional ballots, which often go uncounted, if they change their addresses from another county at polling places on Election Day.

Opponents, such as the league, say the law passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature is intended to suppress turnout by minorities, the elderly and young people who tend to vote Democratic. Republicans contend the restrictions are needed to prevent voting fraud.

Boooo-yaaahhh!

 

[Wrong Element]

We Need Those Dead Votes!

Tell this veteran of the Bulge that he's dead:

A 91-year-old World War II veteran, who faces losing the right to vote after state officials flagged thousands of people who may be ineligible, is now getting backup from two South Florida congressmen...


...Internicola received the letter from the Broward Supervisor of Elections Office days ago.

“We have received information from the state of Florida that you are not a United States citizen yet you are registered to vote,” Deutch read from the letter. “You have 30 days to act on this notice or be removed from our voter rolls.”

Deutch said the letter told Internicola he could request an administrative hearing to prove his citizenship.

Internicola, who said he had voted in Florida for the past 15 years, was flabbergasted.

“I really don’t understand it,” he said. “To me, it is like an insult.”



http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/91-Year-Old-WWII-Veteran-Accused-Of-Ineligible-Voting.html


Why do you hate our veterans?

 

[KingOrfeo]

Tell this veteran of the Bulge that he's dead:

A 91-year-old World War II veteran, who faces losing the right to vote after state officials flagged thousands of people who may be ineligible, is now getting backup from two South Florida congressmen...


...Internicola received the letter from the Broward Supervisor of Elections Office days ago.

“We have received information from the state of Florida that you are not a United States citizen yet you are registered to vote,” Deutch read from the letter. “You have 30 days to act on this notice or be removed from our voter rolls.”

Deutch said the letter told Internicola he could request an administrative hearing to prove his citizenship.

Internicola, who said he had voted in Florida for the past 15 years, was flabbergasted.

“I really don’t understand it,” he said. “To me, it is like an insult.”



http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/91-Year-Old-WWII-Veteran-Accused-Of-Ineligible-Voting.html


Why do you hate our veterans?

Well, the suspicion is understandable. C'mon, "Internicola"?! That's not a real American name, that's some kinda too-elaborate madeup porn name!

 

[KingOrfeo]

Flrodia still refuses to stop the purge.

Florida will defy a federal warning to stop purging people the state suspects aren't U.S. citizens from voter registration rolls.

Despite a Justice Department letter, objections from county elections officials and evidence that a disproportionate number are voters of color, Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner's office planned to continue scrubbing the election rolls, a spokesman said Friday. Gov. Rick Scott (R) ordered the search for potentially ineligible voters.

“We have an obligation to make sure the voter rolls are accurate and we are going to continue forward and do everything that we can legally do to make sure than ineligible voters cannot vote,” said Chris Cate, a spokesman for Detzner. “We are firmly committed to doing the right thing and preventing ineligible voters from being able to cast a ballot. We are not going to give up our efforts to make sure the voter rolls are accurate."

Justice Department officials declined to comment on Florida’s plans.

In a letter issued late Thursday, T. Christian Herren Jr., who leads the Justice Department voting section, told Detzner that the state's plan to review the status of the 2,600 suspected non-citizens and purge them if the voters fail to prove citizenship appears to violate the 1964 Voting Rights Act and the National Voter Registration Act.

Detzner has said previously that his agency has identified 182,000 voters who were not citizens by comparing voter rolls and driver's license databases. The state's driver's license data contains some citizenship information. Beginning in April, Detzner asked county election officials statewide to contact 2,600 suspect voters by mail. The letters said those who failed to provide evidence of citizenship within 30 days would be purged. They also warned that casting a ballot when ineligible constitutes a felony.

"The Florida Secretary of State is being recalcitrant," said Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of The Advancement Project., a Washington-based voting rights advocacy group that last month asked the Justice Department to investigate. "He wants to move forward despite federal notice of illegality and supervisors of elections' refusal to purge voters. He should just quit it."

Florida is among of a small number states, mostly in the South, covered by Section V of the Voting Rights Act, a landmark law that reinforces voting rights guaranteed in the Constitution. In five Florida counties and other states, election officials have a history of such of egregious and creative efforts to suppress black and Latino votes that any changes in voting–related policy or procedure must first be approved by the Justice Department or a panel of federal judges, Browne Dianis said.

Florida failed to get clearance for its purge or its methods to identify the people the state suspects are non-citizens.

Voting rights advocates have also pointed out the state motor vehicles database is an unreliable way to determine the citizenship of voters, because many people become citizens between license renewals.

Moreover, in an initial list of nearly 3,000 voters the state suspects are non-citizens, blacks and Latinos were disproportionately represented, a coalition of advocacy groups said in a statement Thursday. A Miami Herald analysis
found nearly 60 percent of the people on the list to be Latino. Hispanic voters constitute just 13 percent of the state's electorate, according to federal data.

The National Voter Registration Act requires states to make every effort to monitor and maintain clean and accurate voter rolls, Browne Dianis said. But the same law also says efforts must take place 90 days or more before a federal election begins. Florida voters are set to vote in a primary Aug. 14 that includes candidates seeking congressional seats -- meaning the state has missed the three-month deadline.

Florida interprets the laws governing voting differently, said Cate, the secretary of state's spokesman. And the state's efforts have already proven effective, he said. Cate pointed to Miami-Dade County, where warning letters were first mailed to suspect voters.

Miami-Dade County election officials issued 1,570 warning letters, said Christina White, the county chief deputy supervisor of elections. Of these, 13 people responded indicating they are not citizens and have been removed from the voter rolls. One of the voters cast one ballot in 1996. Another voted once in 2000 and again in 2004. Their names will be forwarded to the state’s attorney’s office for possible prosecution as required by law, White said.

However, Miami-Dade County said it will not purge other voters from the rolls because of the large number of citizens included on the state’s suspect voter list. Nearly 450 voters who received warning letters provided proof of citizenship and another 35 have made plans to do so. About 1,000 voters have not responded, White said.

“The law says that the supervisor, only on a preponderance of evidence, should be removing people form the rolls,” said White. “We just didn’t feel that we didn’t have the preponderance of evidence that the supervisor needs to make a call on someone’s eligibility at this time that we haven’t heard from.”

Election officials in other counties around the state -– both Democrats and Republicans -- have questioned the state’s suspect voter list and have expressed indignation about the purge.

In Broward County, a 91-year-old World War II veteran was forced to provide proof of his citizenship in order to remain on the voter rolls. And in Seminole County, an election official tweeted a picture of himself with one man who received a warning letter. In the picture, the two men stood side by side, holding the suspect voter’s U.S. passport.

State election officials in Colorado and New Mexico, states with significant Latino populations, have also launched efforts to identify and purge suspected non-citizens from voter rolls. Justice Department officials declined to comment Friday on those efforts.

"We all benefit when [voter] list maintenance occurs within the bounds of federal law,” said Myrna Perez, senior council at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. “Nobody benefits form inaccurate voter rolls. But it’s also certainly the case that you have wildly different things happening not only from state to state, but sometimes from county to county.”

States should make their methods for identifying and purging voters known and give voters time to object or correct errors before an election, said Perez.

 

[KingOrfeo]

But, the 67 county elections supervisors won't cooperate with the purge. (And Scott can't fire them, they're elected locally.)

TALLAHASSEE — Florida elections supervisors said Friday they will discontinue a state-directed effort to remove names from county voter rolls because they believe the state data is flawed and because the U.S. Department of Justice has said the process violates federal voting laws.

Late Thursday, the Department of Justice sent Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner a letter telling him that an effort launched by Republican Gov. Rick Scott's administration last year to remove the names of people believed to be non-citizens from voter rolls appears to violate at least two federal voting laws. The federal agency gave Detzner until Wednesday to respond.

The Justice Department letter and mistakes that the 67 county elections supervisors have found in the state list make the scrub undoable, said Martin County Elections Supervisor Vicki Davis, president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections.

"There are just too many variables with this entire process at this time for supervisors to continue," Davis said.

Ron Labasky, the association's general counsel, sent a memo to the 67 supervisors Friday telling them to stop processing the list.

"I recommend that Supervisors of Elections cease any further action until the issues raised by the Department of Justice are resolved between the parties or by a Court," Labasky wrote.

Davis said the effect on supervisors will be "if they've started the process and they do find out that someone is ineligible to vote and they have credible and reliable information to back it up, then they will remove that person from the database. But if they have not had contact with someone on the list, they're stopping at that point."

Detzner in April sent supervisors a list of more than 2,600 voters his Division of Elections had identified as potential non-citizens by matching the state's voter registration database with driver license records. Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher received 115 such names.

Supervisors were supposed to send letters to those on the list notifying them to provide proof of citizenship within 30 days or be removed from the voter rolls. But supervisors say they have found errors, including some on the list who have died, many who have become naturalized citizens since they first got their driver licenses, and others who are U.S.-born citizens -- including a 91-year-old, Brooklyn-born World War II hero who now lives in Broward County.

Detzner's spokesman, Chris Cate, said of the supervisors' plan, "The supervisors have the ultimate duty of making the determination of eligibility. We respect the process and we have confidence in their capability to determine if someone is an ineligible voter or not."

Meanwhile, the U.S. Justice Department said the scrub appears to violate at least two federal National Voting Rights Act laws.

Five counties in Florida require federal approval before any voting or election changes are made for those counties, but Detzner did not seek approval from the Justice Department or a federal court, according to the letter written by T. Christian Herren, chief of the Justice Department's voting section.

Florida's current effort also appears to violate the National Voting Right Act's prohibition on any major voter scrub 90 days before an election, Herron wrote. With an Aug. 14 primary scheduled in Florida, that would prohibit scrubs after May 16.

Herren gave Detzner until Wednesday to respond "so that the Department can determine what further action, if any, is necessary."

Detzner issued a press release Friday indicating he will respond on time but will not back down from the state's effort.

"As Florida's Chief Election Officer, I am committed to ensuring the accuracy of Florida's voter rolls and the integrity of our elections. . . . The Department will continue to act in a responsible and cautious manner when presented with credible information about potentially ineligible voters. No one that has the right to vote has been denied the opportunity to cast a vote, and as the Secretary, it is my duty to ensure that remains the case," Detzner said.

Cate said the agency disagrees with the federal department's interpretation of the 90-day restriction on voter list maintenance.

 

[NeverEndingMe]

damn it June, the dead have a right to vote!

 

[busybody..]

OBAMA TO HOLDER: "I CANNOT WIN FLORIDA WITHOUT VOTER FRAUD"





Florida, at the urging of Republican Gov. Rick Scott, began looking for non-U.S. citizens on its voter rolls last year. An initial search turned up as many as 182,000 registered voters who may not be U.S. citizens.

 

[busybody..]

ID REQUIRED TO CAST DELEGATE VOTES AT THE MA DPC



Breitbart

In recent years, Democrats have argued that requiring voters to show photo IDs prior to voting is an egregious act of voter suppression. Ben Jealous, of the NAACP, has gone so far as to argue that such requirements are tantamount to modern-day Jim Crow laws. In the world they inhabit, lots of voters don’t have access to photo IDs, so requiring voters to provide this will “disenfranchise” them and leave them out of the democratic process. Funny they don’t feel that way for their own party conventions.

On Saturday, Massachusetts delegates will meet in their state’s Democrat party convention. The votes of these delegates will determine whether there are primary elections for their party nominations. With so much at state, Democrats have decided to implement Voter ID requirements:

A PHOTO ID WILL BE REQUIRED TO ENTER THE MASSMUTUAL CENTER

 

[KingOrfeo]

Republic Report reports:

Florida Official Behind Gov. Rick Scott's Voter Purge Linked to $1 Billion Campaign Effort Against Obama

By Lee Fang posted Jun 4th 2012 at 8:00AM

On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice asked officials in Florida to suspend the controversial voter purge conducted by Gov. Rick Scott's (R) administration, citing possible violations of voting rights law. Florida officials had been purging a list of suspected non-citizen voters, estimated at one point to include at least 180,000 people, despite evidence that the list is riddled with errors. Thousands of targeted voters are in fact American citizens. As ThinkProgress and the Miami Herald have reported, a great deal of the individuals also happen to be Hispanics and Democratic-leaning voters, suggesting the effort is deeply partisan.

The plan for the purge, according to a story from the Associated Press, was initiated last year by then-Secretary of State Kurt Browning after a meeting with the governor. Browning said he was motivated by a "Spidey sense tingling" to undergo a massive project to develop the list now being used to send letters to registered Florida voters informing them that they have been flagged as non-citizens. Although both Gov. Scott and Browning have downplayed accusations that the purge is political, a donation from a secret money group may fuel growing suspicions that the effort is partisan.

Just before Browning was selected in 2011 by Scott as Secretary of State, Browning led a group called "Protect Your Vote Inc," which was set up to oppose fair redistricting. One of the biggest checks to Browning's organization came from the Center to Protect Patients' Rights, which gave $100,000 in 2010. At the time of the donation, the source of the money was shrouded in secrecy. View a screen shot of the disclosure:

But as Republic Report exclusively reported last month, the Center to Protect Patients' Rights is part of a universe of front groups financed by David and Charles Koch, the petrochemical billionaires, as well as several other billionaires, as part of an election-influencing effort. New reports this week about the brothers' strategy indicate that they will now use this constellation of front groups to finance $400 million of a $1 billion campaign in outside money to defeat President Obama and congressional Democrats. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Mitt Romney's Super PAC, and several nonprofits controlled by Karl Rove, will furnish the other $600 million.

Browning, who resigned as Secretary of State late last year, also relied heavily on funds from the Republican Party of Florida and the Florida Chamber of Commerce, a big business lobbying group, to support his Protect Your Vote organization, which ultimately failed in blocking redistricting reform. Browning is currently pursuing a bid for local office.

Update: The Florida Independent and the Brennan Center note that Browning orchestrated a controversial voter purge only weeks before the general election in 2008.

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

15 purged voters put back on the rolls by county elections supervisors. The good guys are winning by a nose so far . . .

 

[NeverEndingMe]

15 purged voters put back on the rolls by county elections supervisors. The good guys are winning by a nose so far . . .

yet you are still stupid

 

[KingOrfeo]

Lessons and signs of fightback in Wisconsin, anyway.

Young and Black Voters Turn Out in Wisconsin Despite Suppression Efforts

Brentin Mock on June 6, 2012 - 11:41 AM ET

It may not feel like there’s anything positive to make out of the unsuccessful bid to recall Governor Scott Walker in yesterday’s Wisconsin elections, but there were hints of optimism. Young voters and African-American voters did more than their part to show up, according to exit polls and early reports, despite significant efforts to confuse and challenge them from groups that profess to be fighting voter fraud.

In Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett’s seven-point loss to Walker, voters aged 18–29 increased their slice of the electorate from 15 percent in 2010 to 16 percent yesterday. Black voters came out mob-deep. John Nichols, who’s been covering Wisconsin inside-out for The Nation, reported, “Turnout was up dramatically, so much so that on election day election clerks had to be shifted to predominantly African-American wards.”

This was mainly true in Racine and Milwaukee, where young people and people of color have seen enough murder and lack of educational and economic opportunity to drive them to the polls, recall or not.

“We had several hundred youth out there showing that they are invested in their future, that they do understand the politics of today and that if folks are willing to listen to us we can help create meaningful change,” said the deputy director of the League of Young Voters, Carey Jenkins, who simply goes by “C.J.” He noted that in the last six weeks, League youth knocked on over 110,000 doors. “It felt like 2008 all over again.” A Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel graph shows the shift in youth votes between 2010 and 2012:

t wasn’t enough to carry the whole state, which mostly went to Walker. One takeaway from this election, though, is that massive grassroots organizing is no longer the exclusive domain of Democrats and their civil rights and labor allies. The right wing has found ways to go mob-deep in its own way, as evidenced by the presence of the Tea Party group True the Vote, a group that wants their “poll observer” activities to make voters feel like the police are following them.

True the Vote traveled all the way from Texas for this Wisconsin bout, stringing along hundreds if not thousands of poll observers from around the country. It’s worth examining how close they are working with the Republican Party.

By about 2 pm, Carolyn Castore, who coordinated an initiative between Wisconsin Election Protection and the state’s League of Women Voters to field voter complaints, said she’d taken about 140 calls, mostly from college students who were challenged on their right to vote. Many of those students were challenged by True the Vote poll watchers, said Castore. (True the Vote mocked those students on Twitter).

College students were hampered by a new voter residency requirement that says a citizen must live in one location for twenty-eight days in order to register to vote. Before the 2011 law went into effect, the requirement was only ten days. Many students graduated in mid-May, went home from campuses to live with their families and thus were affected by the twenty-eight-day rule.

Also, a photo voter ID bill that passed this year, but was blocked by two judges, was not supposed to be in effect. But students complained about being challenged on ID grounds anyway.

All of that was bad enough, but then there were reports of robo-calls to voters’ phones telling them that if they signed the recall petition they didn’t have to vote, which was totally false information. Reid Magney, spokesman for the state’s Government Accountability Board said they received “a significant number” of complaints about these robo-calls, despite numerous media reports that “no big problems” were occurring during elections. State Senator Lena C. Taylor has asked the GAB to launch an investigation into the mysterious calls.

Walker’s campaign denied having anything to do with the calls. Meanwhile, though, the Republican Party was having plenty of fun using iPhone and Facebook technology to keep Walker in office. Before yesterday’s election, the Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, who hails from Wisconsin, swore that voter fraud was rampant in his home state. Governor Walker echoed such sentiments, despite there being only twenty-seven charges and convictions of fraud since 2004.

But after Walker’s win, Priebus unveiled a memo telling how they achieved victory:

We spearheaded a joint effort with neighboring states to drive grassroots supporters to Wisconsin, and we mobilized volunteers from across the country to get involved through our innovative online Social Victory Center and phone-from-home program. In the process, more than 3,400 Wisconsin volunteers have signed up to help the party. And the data collected by door-to-door volunteers for Governor Walker was all promptly added to the RNC’s data center, thanks to the use of iPads, iPhones, and iPods.

I’m not sure how you collect data with iPods, but the Social Victory Center is a GOP-created Facebook app that can send up to ten automatic messages from the Republican Party, from your cellphone. There’s no proof that Republicans used this app to spread misinformation in this election. But what their volunteer networks were up to yesterday, and what they’ll do through November will be worth watching.

Priebus’s “joint effort” with other states and “mobilized volunteers” sounds a lot like an effort deployed by True the Vote, who sent this message the day before the election:

True the Vote, a national nonpartisan, nonprofit grassroots organization focused on preserving election integrity, has joined forces with citizens from Wisconsin and around the country in an unprecedented effort, banding together to recruit, train, and mobilize Election Observers for Wisconsin’s June 5 Recall Election.

True the Vote will also sponsor command centers in key areas across Wisconsin to provide support for Election Observers on Tuesday, June 5.

Hopefully, protecting “election integrity” didn’t mean harrassing student voters. But Wisconsin Republican Party spokesman Benjamin Sparks bragged that they made contact with 3.5 million voters, “the largest grassroots campaign Republicans have ever had in the state.”

It makes the League of Young Voters’ 110,000 number sound like chump change. That’s not to diminish the hard work the league did, going into Milwaukee neighborhoods to convince people who’ve been hardened by a brutal economy to register to vote. League canvassers were up at dawn, says C.J., knocking on doors, windows and air conditioners to engage urban folks, who are often the most distrustful of government, for understandable reasons. But the league doesn’t have the resources of the Republican Party and the Walker campaign, which spent almost $64 million on this election—$3 of every $5 coming from outside of Wisconsin.

So the Democrats were outspent, but it also sounds like they may not have made the most strategic use of the money they had. As Representative Gwen Moore of Milwaukee told John Nichols in The Nation, “You can’t spend all your money on television. You’ve got to spend it on the ground. That’s the most important thing to take away from Wisconsin.”

The league takes youth from the most violent and impoverished neighborhoods and gets them politically engaged. “You have young people knocking on doors in violent neighborhoods asking people to vote, and that needs to be invested in because these kids are risking their lives to make change.” Hopefully someone will take notice, while Republicans continue to invest in their version of change.

 

[KingOrfeo]

GOP election supervisor rebukes Scott, won't go along with the purge.

Though Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL)’s administration has now said it will not follow the Department of Justice’s order to end its voter roll purge, a Republican county elections supervisor’s spokeswoman told ThinkProgress she will not resume the purge effort.

Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark (R) released a statement Friday saying that her office would not continue the purge:

The accuracy of the voter registration database is of the utmost importance and we will continue our efforts to ensure the information is current. However, we will not use unreliable data.

When asked whether the Scott administration’s decision to defy the Department of Justice order changed anything, Clark spokeswoman Nancy Whitlock told ThinkProgress “No. Ms. Clark’s position remains as stated [on Friday].”

Pinellas County had initially purged 14 voters who the state suspected might not be citizens, but reinstated them when it became clear that Scott administration’s list of “sure-fire non-citizens” was riddled with a gigantic number of errors and the DOJ announced that the purge violated both the Voting Rights Act and the National Voter Registration Act.

Whitlock noted that Clark and other Florida elections supervisors had questioned “not only the accuracy of the information, but also the timing after learning that the state had the list of voters more than a year prior to distributing it.”

 

[richard_daily]

I find it odd that the wingnuts who are first to rally to the "rah rah USA USA" chants are also the first to shut their mouths when it comes to US citizens losing their voting rights.

How come they're ok with removing legitimate voters from the rolls? There are many examples of it, some listed in this very thread. Is it because they hate this country?


Voter suppression seems to be a very common tactic on the right these days... and what could be less American than denying people their ability to vote?