CENTRAL FLORIDA POLITICAL PULSE via ORLANDO SENTINEL
TALLAHASSEE — Voter groups and two Miami-Dade women who were wrongly targeted in the state’s non-citizen voter purge sued the state today in U.S. District Court in Miami.
The coalition of voting groups argued that the program violates a federal voting law that bans purging voter rolls within 90 days of an election — Florida’s primary is Aug. 14 — and that it is unfairly targeting blacks and Hispanics.
“This suit gives those communities their voice and their day in court,” said Catherine Flanagan, a lawyer for Project Vote.
The group alleged that 87 percent of the names of the 2,600-plus voters sent to elections supervisors as possible non-citizens are minorities.
Two of the plaintiffs — Karla Arcia and Melande Antoine — fell into that category. Antoine’s husband also received a notice that he was illegally registered to vote.
The voter purge has evolved from an attempt by Gov. Rick Scott’s Division of Elections to scrub the voter rolls into an all-out political and legal fight with the Obama administration, the ACLU and other voting rights groups.
The ACLU and U.S. Justice Department have separately sued the state in an attempt to stop the program. And the state has sued the Department of Homeland Security to gain access to an immigration database it says will give them more accurate citizenship data.
Of the 2,600 people who were identified as potential non-citizen voters, 107 so far have proved to be non-citizens — but hundreds of others were found to be legally registered to vote.
Fifty-two of the non-citizens purged had actually cast ballots, according to a computer analysis of the purged names. Of those, 32 voted in the 2008 general election or since. Another 13 voted earlier in the past decade. Seven others have not voted in the 21st century, including one woman who had not cast a ballot since 1986.
Chris Cate, a spokesman for the Department of State was quick to respond to the newest lawsuit, saying that the department had a “year-round obligation to ensure the voter rolls are current and accurate.”
“Furthermore, we not aware of anyone who has been erroneously removed from the voter rolls as a result of this initiative,” he said. “The only criteria we are concerned about is whether someone is an ineligible voter, and if so, they need to be removed from the voter rolls. Race or party don’t play any role in the process whatsoever.” READ MORE.