Voting Rights Groups Call on Florida to Stop Purging Voters

A voting rights coalition sent a letter to Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner today, alerting him that Florida’s plan to identify and remove alleged non-citizens from the voter rolls violates federal law and must cease immediately.

Earlier this month, the Florida Division of Elections sent county supervisors of elections a list of nearly 2,700 voters that they flagged as possible non-citizens by comparing voter lists with the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (DHSMV) database and jury recusal forms. These “matches” are scheduled for removal from the rolls if they do not respond to notification within 30 days.

The coalition—including Project Vote, Fair Elections Legal Network, Advancement Project, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, LULAC Florida, and the Hillsborough Hispanic Coalition, Inc.—outlined the faults in Florida’s error-prone matching program.

Database matching programs are notoriously unreliable. Data entry errors, similar-sounding names, and changing information can all produce false matches. Additionally, some voters slated for removal may well have been naturalized since completing the DHSMV or juror forms. Further, it places the burden of proof on the voter, who must respond within 30 days to a notice letter that could easily be lost, misplaced, or inadvertently ignored.

The groups also noted that the purge effort violates Section 8 of the NVRA, which requires any program to remove ineligible voters to be completed no later than 90 days before a primary or general election for federal office. Florida’s primary election is less than 90 days away on August 14.

“The law is very clear, and there is a reason it requires voter purges to be completed well in advance of an election,” explains Catherine M. Flanagan, director of the Election Administration Program for Project Vote. “It is to provide the time necessary for election officials to verify their information and for wrongfully removed eligible voters to correct the mistake.”

The program disproportionately burdens Latinos, Haitian Americans, and other minority voters in Florida. According to the NVRA, any state program to maintain an accurate and current voter roll must be “uniform, nondiscriminatory, and in compliance with the Voting Rights Act.”

“The right to vote is the fundamental pillar of our democracy. Florida has a shameful history of purging minority voters based on false information and inaccurate lists right before the presidential elections,” said Penda Hair, Co-Director of the Advancement Project. “This year’s deeply flawed process disproportionately targets Latino voters and is discriminatory, unfair and antithetical to the values of our nation.” READ MORE.

Correction: May 24, 2012

An earlier version of this post stated that Florida’s Presidential primary was scheduled for August 14, 2012. The state’s Presidential primary took place in January; it is the primary election  (for U.S. Senate and other offices) that will take place in August.