Breaking Tonight ~ Dept. of Justice Sues State of Florida

Unbelievable. Today I wrote a post about Governor Scott of Florida refusing to comply with the Department of Justice request to stop purging and instead trying to sue Homeland Security for more voter records to purge.
And tonight, Think Progress is reporting that the Department of Justice is striking back with a lawsuit of their own. The letter is fascinating and lectures Governor Scott once again about the purpose of the National Voter Registration Act that protects the rights of individual voters over the rights of the states.
Letter Here on Scribd
Also from Talking Points Memo

Last Friday, June 8th, the ACLU also filed a lawsuit against the State of Florida on behalf of some voters mistakenly placed on the purge list. From the Palm Beach Post:

The ACLU, the Lawyers’ Committee on Civil Rights Under Law and the law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges asked a three-judge panel in Tampa to stop Secretary of State Ken Detzner from continuing the scrub until the Justice Department decides whether it is permissible.
. . . Murat Limage, a Haitian-American U.S. Citizen, and Pamela Gomez, who is a Dominican-American Hispanic U.S. Citizen, brought the suit along with Mi Familia Vota Education Fund, a non-profit organization dedicated to working with the Latino/Hispanic community to increase civic participation. Both Gomez and Limage are registered to vote in Hillsborough County.
Haitian-born Murat Limage, one of the plaintiffs in the case, registered to vote after becoming a naturalized citizen two years ago. Limage was one of the more than 2,000 voters who received written notice from local elections officials notifying him that he “may not be a U.S. citizen,” the lawsuit reads.

According to the lawsuit, Limage provided his U.S. passport and other citizenship documents to the Hillsborough County elections office but has not yet received confirmation that he will be allowed to vote.
“When I received the letter saying that they had information that I may not be a citizen, I was concerned that someone was taking away my citizenship,” Limage said in a press release announcing the lawsuit today. “I’m an American which means I can vote and that’s all I want to do.”

DOJ Letter to Florida 6:11:2012

Governor Scott says Florida Will Sue Homeland Security for List of Voters to Purge

This guy is all kinds of crazy. Even with his popularity dropping and all his Election Officials in mutiny, he can't stop the purge. He's the Captain Queeg of Florida looking for his strawberries illegal voters.

From Talking Points Memo

“The Florida’s Secretary of State office wil be filing a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security to give us that database,” Scott said. “We want to have fair, honest elections in our state and so we have been put in a position that we have to sue the federal government to get this information.” The move comes after Scott disregarded a request from the Department of Justice on Wednesday to abandon efforts to purge eligible voters.

Neil Cavuto, who conducted the interview, pressed Scott on why many of those who objected to the purge were Republican election supervisors. Cavuto also noted that other prominent Florida Republicans, notably Sen. Marco Rubio, were notably silent on the purge.

Florida ~ Purging Towards Oblivion

More on the Florida Voter List Purge situation:

Sign the ThinkProgress Petition to Stop Rick Scott's Voter Purge

Palm Beach Post: All 67 Florida County Election Supervisors Stop Purging

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."

Old Northeast Patch: Pinellas Halts Voter Verification

Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark announced Friday that she halted processing the list of potential non-citizen voters distributed to all Florida Supervisors of Elections by the Division of Elections.
..."We’ve been told not to proceed with the verification process, and we don’t want to take anyone off the list who could be an eligible voter," Whitlock told Patch. "At this point we are just stopping the process. Not doing anything else with it further."

CBS: Florida Dems Push Back

...a handful of Democratic Florida lawmakers are pushing back, arguing in a letter to Gov. Rick Scott that the process "fails to meet the basic standards of accountability" and that proceeding with it would be "irresponsible."
...In Tuesday's letter, Florida Democratic lawmakers Ted Deutch, Alcee Hastings, Corinne Brown, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Frederica Wilson and Kathy Castor contend that "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."
"Given that this process fails to meet basic standards of accountability, and that the legal authority for automatic removal of registered voters is currently being challenged in both state and federal court, it is irresponsible to proceed so quickly and with so little room for oversight," the letter reads.

Miami Herald: Minorities and Democrats Targets of Purge

The election-year effort, led by a Republican-appointed secretary of state, has increasingly become a focus of concern among Democrats, liberals and civil-liberties groups. They worry that the state could wind up removing lawful voters from the rolls.
...When they register to vote, Hispanics are flocking to the Democratic Party or to the no-party-affiliation label — nicknamed “NPA” — a sign the Republican Party’s hard-line immigration stances are turning off Latinos.
Those potential noncitizens who register as NPAs have been disproportionately flagged in the state’s computer sweep. ... Democrats are the most-likely to be flagged, in large part because their party has the biggest ranks in Florida. They make up 40 percent of the voter rolls and 40 percent of the potential noncitizens.

Florida Purge Halted by Feds

Some good news out of Florida for a change, at least for now. A Federal Judge ruled yesterday that the "24-hour limit" for helping to register someone to vote was unecessarily strict. Then last night, the Department of Justice announced that they are getting more involved with the fight to stop the purging of the voter rolls in Florida by Governor Rick Scott. About time!  The League of Women Voters and even schoolteachers were being threatened with large legal fines, and people who are citizens of this country are being scrubbed from the voter rolls. Something had to be done.

From the Tampa Bay Times

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle told the state it cannot require groups to submit voter registration forms within 48 hours or face $1,000 fines. Nor can the state force those groups to disclose names of volunteers who don't collect the forms, Hinkle ruled.
"The short deadline, coupled with substantial penalties for non-compliance, make voter registration drives a risky business," Hinkle wrote. "If the goal is to discourage voter registration drives and thus make it harder for new voters to register, the 48-hour deadline may succeed."
... Hinkle said voter registration activity is protected speech under the First Amendment. His injunction means that groups will have 10 days to submit voter forms, as they did before the law was changed.
. . . It's a victory for three grass roots groups that brought the lawsuit: Rock the Vote, the Florida Public Interest Group Education Fund and the League of Women Voters of Florida, which suspended all voter registration efforts after the law took effect.
"We are really delighted," said Deirdre MacNab, president of the League of Women Voters. "It knocks out the poor parts of an unreasonable and unconstitutional law. Our volunteers are eager to get back to work."

And the Department of Justice sent Florida a letter serving notice that they are watching the voter purge to see if it is justified (of course it isn't!).

From Naples News:

T. Christian Herren, chief of the department's voting section, sent a letter to Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner that said the state's actions appear to violate two federal voting laws. Florida has used a search of a driver's license database to try to identify non-citizens who are ineligible to vote. Herren's letter said the actions do not comply with part of the federal Voting Rights Act that requires Florida to get a sign-off from the Department of Justice or a federal court for actions that affect five counties with a history of discrimination.
. . . The letter also said Florida could be violating another law known as the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which includes standards for how voter lists are maintained. Part of the law requires states to finish the systematic removal of ineligible voters 90 days before a primary or general election --- a deadline that passed May 16 for Florida, which has a primary on Aug. 14. The Department of Justice gave Detzner less than a week to say how the state will deal with the possible legal violations.
. . . "Specifically, please advise whether the state intends to cease the practice discussed above, so that the department can determine what further action, if any, is necessary."

Of course, Florida is protesting that it never meant to suppress the vote. They are just saving the country from voter fraud.

From CNN

In a statement, Chris Cate said the decision to remove names from the list was essential to preventing non-citizens from casting ballots illegally.
"The Department of State has a duty under both state and federal laws to ensure that Florida's voter registration rolls are current and accurate. Therefore, identifying ineligible voters is something we are always doing," Cate wrote.
He added that the action was not meant to prevent minority voters from voting.
"The political party and race of the potential non-citizens is not a factor at all in our process," Cate wrote. "We are only concerned about identifying ineligible voters and making sure they can't cast a ballot."

Yeah, right. *eyeroll*