Florida’s list-matching procedure that compares the voter rolls with the motor vehicle’s records to vet out “potential non-citizens” may hurt the democratic process more than it helps.
According to the Miami Herald blog, Naked Politics, approximately 2,700 out of 12 million registered voters have been flagged and contacted about proving that they are citizens, including Maria Ginorio, who became a citizen in 2009. Ginorio, an absentee voter who is “ill and homebound,” was put off by the request for citizenship documents and said she would likely forgo voting altogether.
“I’m not going to do anything about this,” said Ginorio. “I can’t. I guess I won’t vote anymore. I say this with pain in my heart, because voting is my right as a citizen.”
“Citizens like Ginorio were flagged as potential ineligible voters after the state’s Division of Elections compared its database with a database maintained by Florida’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, which records whether a new driver is a U.S. citizen when he or she gets a license.
“As a result, some citizens could appear to be non citizens now because the DHSMV computer system doesn’t automatically update when someone becomes a citizen, said Chris Cate, a spokesman with the Florida Division of Elections.”
Supporters of the law say it’s a “preventative” measure against voter fraud. However, University of Florida professor, Dan Smith criticized the list maintenance procedure for its potential to purge eligible voters and noted that the number of “potential non-citizens” pales in comparison to the number of registered voters.
“This attests to the fact that there’s very little voter-registration fraud,” Smith said. “This purging can be a real problem.”