The Man Who Racially Profiles Hispanic Voters

[Howey]

Florida's war on Hispanics continues with Gov. Rick (Jar Jar) Scott's plans to disenfranchise Hispanic and Democrat voters throughout the state through the simple and unconstitutional process of racial profiling.

Identifying registered Democrats with Hispanic surnames, Scott is hoping to secure the nomination of Romney in Florida not by courting hispanics, but by making it more difficult for them to vote.

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...

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.

Responsibility for this lies directly in the hands of Gov. Scott. Last year, he initiated his order to purge Hispanics from the voting rolls, indicating some may not be citizens. At that time, Sec of State Kurt Browning, questioned the move, based upon unreliable source data.

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."

I guess not. Browning was booted out of office and the quest to disenfranchise Hispanic voters continued without him.

Not only is racial profiling of voters unconstitutional, the actions of Scott and his cronies is also illegal.

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.”

Rick Scott escaped jail time for defrauding the government. Can we make sure he's removed from office and jailed for defrauding the state's voters?

[Howey]

Seems like the state's election officers, mostly republicans, are up in arms over this. Led by former Secretary of State, Kurt Browning, who was asked to resign when Scott first ordered him to do this.

Yes, the following is a source from FOX, so it may or may not be legit:

http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/story/18441636/fla-says-more-than-53000-dead-on-voting-rolls

Florida's local election supervisors on Wednesday sounded skeptical, and even distrustful, of a push by the state to remove thousands of potential non-U.S. citizens from the voting rolls just months before the critical 2012 elections.

The supervisors, meeting at their annual summer conference, peppered state election officials with questions about the list of more than 2,600 people who have been identified as being in Florida legally but ineligible to vote. That list was sent to supervisors recently, but state officials have also said there may be as many as 182,000 registered voters who may not be citizens.

Aha! So my claim is right! There is no list of 182,000...it's only 2,600! Anyhow, as you can see, even Republicans are against this.

But election supervisors - including Democrats and Republicans - asked a range of questions about the level of proof that state election officials had regarding the citizenship status of voters which was culled by comparing voter registration lists to a state driver's license database. They said they wanted more information before they purge someone from the voting rolls.

"I'm feeling really uncomfortable about this," Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes told officials with the state's Division of Elections.

Brian Corley, the Pasco County elections supervisor, questioned the timing of the push, noting that election officials were first given a list of potential ineligible voters from the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles roughly a year ago.

Corley pointed out how two voters on the department's list given to him wound up being born in Ohio and Massachusetts. One of the names wound up on the list of non-U.S. citizens because the driver's license number used to check citizenship had one number wrong on it.

"We want our voter rolls to be accurate, obviously no one wants someone to vote who isn't a citizen," Corley said. "But at the same time we are the ones fielding phone calls from voters saying `Why are you questioning my citizenship?"

Added Gertrude Walker, the St. Lucie County elections supervisor: "We don't have confidence in the validity of the information."

What's Scott's response to this? He's going after the supervisors, pointing out who's supporting him by ranking them!

Gov. Rick Scott has infuriated elections officials across Florida by rating their effectiveness based on requests for routine information from the presidential preference primary in January.

Election supervisors call the survey "flawed" and "inappropriate," because the information is not a true indicator of how well an election is run.

In a letter to Scott, they warned that the results could do more harm than good in a presidential election year when, as usual, all eyes will be on Florida.

"It also has the potential to undermine confidence in Florida's elections, which we work tirelessly to instill in the public," wrote David Stafford, the elections supervisor in Pensacola's Escambia County and president of the statewide association.

[uselesslegs]

It's never ending.  Rhetoric and hyper-hysteria.  "MY GAWD...100 people have the flu...it's a pandemic!!!!"

So 2,600 (of which some are shaky) balloons to 182,000?...amazing.  This and other methods are being used across the country to try to suppress, and or disenfranchise, as many as 5 million plus voters...voters who usually cast their ballot as Democrat.  I'd say this was a script for a bad B-movie, but unfortunately, it's real.

[Howey]

It's never ending.  Rhetoric and hyper-hysteria.  "MY GAWD...100 people have the flu...it's a pandemic!!!!"

So 2,600 (of which some are shaky) balloons to 182,000?...amazing.  This and other methods are being used across the country to try to suppress, and or disenfranchise, as many as 5 million plus voters...voters who usually cast their ballot as Democrat.  I'd say this was a script for a bad B-movie, but unfortunately, it's real.

I questioned the 182k number from the beginning. It's more of the Republican fear campaign...

OMG! THERE'S 182 THOUSAND MEXICANS INVADING OUR VOTING BOOTHS!

Bullshit.

Here's one of the people affected by this:

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/elections/one-womans-experience-in-floridas-targeting-of-noncitizen-voters/1232425

She's a Republican who works in sales, loves fishing and the beach, and she'll turn 49 next month.

The daughter of Cuban-born parents, she's Hispanic, part of the fastest-growing minority in Florida, and has a long, hyphenated name: Manoly Castro-Williamson.

"Manoly cannoli," she jokes when people don't know how to say it. "Then everybody thinks it's Italian, which it's not. It's Spanish." Manoly is a nickname for Manuela, she said.

Oh yeah, one more thing: Florida falsely accused her of not being a U.S. citizen.

For reasons she can't fathom, her name got on the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles' list of 2,700 suspected noncitizens who may be voting illegally in Florida.

It was a mistake.

[Howey]

BREAKING!

Palm Beach County refuses to continue voter purge:

Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher, a former Democratic state representative, told ThinkProgress in an interview that while the state of Florida sent her county 115 names of voters it considered “sure matches” with a list of non-citizens, her office determined the list’s documentation to be “not credible” and has not sent out letters asking for verification of citizens to any of those voters.

Bucher said:

We need to make sure we have reliable and credible information, by a preponderance of evidence. We could prove that the information was not credible before sending letters and even the Division of Elections has admitted substantial flaws. I did not feel we had credible information and told them I wouldn’t send [any letters] until they could give me a better list.

This thing is not working out so well, we know the information [on which the state relied to flag these names] is very old. They [listed the voter's] last transaction date with [the Florida Department of] Highway Safety — in many cases, [the was 2000, 2002]. By now they probably have become citizens – I questioned immediately.

As does Hillsborough County:

Craig Latimer, chief of staff to Dr. Earl Lennard in the Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections office, tells CL that his office received 72 names from Tallahassee labeled as "noncitizens" on April 13. The SOE's office then sent certified letters to those citizens informing them that they were ineligible to vote, adding that if they disputed that claim, they could come to the SOE's office to prove otherwise.

Latimer says that five people came to the office with their birth certificates proving they were born in the U.S. Another citizen came with a passport that also indicated U.S. citizenship.

"So at that point it was obvious it wasn't very credible and reliable information, so we suspended any further action."

[Howey]

BREAKING!

Justice Dept outs an end to Scotts criminal purge.

Can he be arrested now?

[Howey]

BREAKING!

Justice Dept outs an end to Scotts criminal purge.

Can he be arrested now?

I don't think I've ever been more right and the idiots on PF more wrongo.

 The Department of Justice demanded that Florida stop purging its voter rolls,Talking Points Memo reported Thursday.

In a letter sent to Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner, the Justice Department ordered the state to end the practice because it has not been approved under the Voting Rights Act. Additionally,the DOJ said the purge violated the National Voter Registration Act,which requires states to complete changes to their registration rolls 90 days in advance of an election. Since Florida's primary is on August 16,all maintenance should have been completed by May 16.

In recent weeks,the state has identified as many as 180,000 potential noncitizens that will be vetted and possibly removed from voter registration rolls. The practice sparked controversy when a Miami Herald analysis revealed that Hispanic,Democratic and Independent voters are more likely to be on the list. In fact,58 percent of those identified as potential noncitizens are Hispanic, according to the Herald's review.

[ekg]

I don't think I've ever been more right and the idiots on PF more wrongo.

It's 'courttv' all over again... they will spew insanity without consequence and when you say anything back it's "Link please" by 45 different numb-nuts..

it's maddening.,.

[Howey]

Guess I'll never know...

[Howey]

More rightness...Election Supervisors won't perform purge.

http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/content/county-elections-officials-halt-controversial-voter-purge

In light of the federal government's objections and a potentially flawed set of data, Florida's elections supervisors will stop using the error-prone list to purge non-citizens from the voting rolls, supervisors of elections officials said Friday.

"My advice under these circumstances, and based upon the previous issues that have been presented concerning the list, as well as the fact that the Department has indicated its intent to take further action to review its list to determine its validity, 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,'' wrote Ron Labasky, general counsel for Florida Association of Supervisors of Election. Download 2012.06.01_-_Legal_Update_to_Supervisors

Vicki Davis, Martin County Supervisor of Election and president of the association, told the Herald/Times she expects all 67 of Florida's elections officials to follow Labasky's advice.

"If supervisors do have reliable information that a voter is no longer eligible, then by all means we want them to process that voter accordingly,'' Davis said. "But from those they haven’t heard from or those that are questionable, we are saying just stop."

The decision comes a day after the U.S. Department of Justice ordered the state to stop its systematic attempt at cleaning the voter rolls saying that the effort appears to violate both the 1965 Voting Rights Act and a 1993 that requires the state to halt any purge of voter rolls 90 days before an election.