Yes­ter­day, Michael Weiss reported on the cur­rent bal­ance of the Elec­toral Col­lege as part of his Elec­tion Watch series. Look­ing at his data, it’s clear that Florida may be an impor­tant fac­tor in the upcom­ing Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, as it was in 2000’s Bush-​​Gore con­test.

This may explain the extra­or­di­nary mea­sures which the cur­rent Repub­li­can gov­er­nor of the state is fol­low­ing to deter­mine who will be able to vote. It also explains the inter­est that var­i­ous minor­ity rights groups have in keep­ing that effort honest.

Why is Florida so impor­tant? As Michael showed, there are cur­rently nine states — Nevada, Col­orado, Iowa, Mis­souri, Wis­con­sin, Ohio, Vir­ginia, North Car­olina, and Florida — which recent polling indi­cates as “tossup” states, that could go for either Obama or Rom­ney. Together, they total an impres­sive 116 elec­toral votes. Accord­ing to cur­rent polling, Pres­i­dent Obama is likely to get a total of 241 elec­toral votes from states that are almost cer­tainly in his col­umn, or which lean in his direc­tion; Romney’s prob­a­ble total stands at 181. With 270 needed to win, this means Rom­ney has to cap­ture 89 elec­toral votes out of the 116 tossups. He can afford to lose only 27 of those; if he loses more, he can­not make it to the magic num­ber of 270.

It just hap­pens that Florida has 29 elec­toral votes. If Rom­ney loses Florida, then he could win every other tossup state — and still not have enough elec­toral votes to win. No other sin­gle tossup state has this fea­ture. The next-​​largest tossup in elec­toral count is Ohio, with 18; then North Car­olina with 15; then Vir­ginia with 13, Wis­con­sin and Mis­souri with ten each, Col­orado at nine, and Nevada and Iowa last, with six apiece.

If Rom­ney wins all of those except Florida, he loses the elec­tion. He could lose any one of the oth­ers, and still win, as long as he gets Florida. He could, in fact, lose Nevada, Iowa, and Col­orado, and still win — as long as he wins Florida.

Put it another way, Pres­i­dent Obama needs only 29 elec­toral votes, in addi­tion to the 241 that (at this point in time) seem prob­a­bly to be already his. That means Florida alone is enough to bring him to 270.

This implies, of course, that the Rom­ney cam­paign would be wise to invest a lot of effort in Florida. As things stand today, he can­not win with­out win­ning Florida. Florida is his Holy Grail.

This is not the first time Florida has been vital. In 2000, G. W. Bush was awarded 271 elec­toral votes, win­ning with only one to spare. The final state to be counted was Florida, which was close enough to require a recount. The recount was stopped after a month by the Supreme Court, in a con­tro­ver­sial 5–4 deci­sion. The offi­cial vote tally gave Bush the state by a mere 537 votes, out of 5,963,110 votes cast — a mar­gin of vic­tory of 0.009%.

For any­one who thinks his or her lone vote doesn’t count, this should come as a wakeup call. An Air France A380 has 538 seats; a sin­gle full flight has enough pas­sen­gers to have elected a dif­fer­ent Pres­i­dent in 2000.

This also means that if the vote count can be altered, one way or the other — or if only a few hun­dred peo­ple can be pre­vented from vot­ing — it could make all the difference.

Ken Det­zner: bing­ing on purging

Florida’s Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor, Rick Scott, and the Repub­li­can Sec­re­tary of State, Ken Det­zner, seem to be seri­ous about tak­ing advan­tage of this pos­si­bil­ity. They are ded­i­cat­ing them­selves to tak­ing peo­ple off the Florida vot­ing rolls — as many peo­ple who are likely to vote Demo­c­ra­tic as possible.

Det­zner is mak­ing lists of reg­is­tered Florida vot­ers who, he claims, may not actu­ally be cit­i­zens. The process used con­sists of com­par­ing voter lists with data from Florida dri­vers’ licenses. Det­zner started with a list of about 180,000 names, and whit­tled it down. He is send­ing thou­sands of let­ters to selected Florida vot­ers, inform­ing them that they will not be allowed to vote, unless they can prove their citizenship.

The U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment informed Dezt­ner that he is in vio­la­tion of the fed­eral Vot­ing Rights Act, and that con­tin­u­ing the purge of vot­ers vio­lates cut-​​off time stip­u­lated by the National Voter Reg­is­tra­tion Act. On Fri­day, Florida informed the Jus­tice depart­ment that it didn’t care, and would pro­ceed with its purge of reg­is­tered voters.

So far, more than 2,600 vot­ers — almost five times as many as made the dif­fer­ence in the final 2000 tally — have been purged. They are over­whelm­ingly poor, African-​​American, or His­panic — groups that tra­di­tion­ally vote Demo­c­ra­tic. One of these tar­geted indi­vid­u­als is a 91-​​year-​​old World War II vet­eran named Bill Inter­ni­cola. He won a Bronze Star for his ser­vice. He now has to prove his cit­i­zen­ship to be allowed to main­tain his voter reg­is­tra­tion in Florida.

Remem­ber, these are all peo­ple who were already reg­is­tered to vote. The Repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tion of Florida is attempt­ing to unreg­is­ter them, uni­lat­er­ally, by offi­cial decree. Florida is appar­ently claim­ing that its voter reg­is­tra­tion process is so flawed, so clumsy and ama­teur­ish, that thou­sands of non-​​citizens are already reg­is­tered to vote in Florida. One might be tempted to ask: If Florida politi­cians and processes are so incom­pe­tent that they can’t be trusted to prop­erly reg­is­ter vot­ers in the first place, why should they be trusted to prop­erly deny peo­ple the right to vote?

No mat­ter. Don’t ask. Mitt Rom­ney needs Florida to win the Pres­i­dency. The Repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tion of the State of Florida is doing what it can to help.

But rea­son and the rule of law are fight­ing back. All 67 of Florida’s elec­tion super­vi­sors have decided to sus­pend their por­tions of Gov­er­nor Scott’s voter unreg­is­ter­a­tion drive, announc­ing on Fri­day that they will dis­con­tinue the purge. The Scott Admin­is­tra­tion had announced ear­lier in the week that it intended to accel­er­ate the purge; it’s unclear how the deci­sions of the peo­ple actu­ally tasked with doing it will affect the Governor’s plans.

Watch for fur­ther devel­op­ments. Gov­er­nor Scott has until June 6 to give the Jus­tice Depart­ment a final answer on their order to halt the purge. We may be head­ing toward another land­mark Supreme Court case.

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