Must we now dread Scott?

A lit­tle over a week ago, I wrote about Florida’s impor­tance in the upcom­ing elec­tion, and the efforts of the Repub­li­can gov­er­nor there to dis­en­fran­chise Florid­i­ans who are likely to vote Demo­c­ra­tic. There have been fur­ther devel­op­ments in the story.

The U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice (DOJ) has filed a law­suit in an effort to block Gov­er­nor Rick Scott’s attempt to purge minori­ties from the voter rolls. In response, Gov­er­nor Scott announced his intent to sue the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity to gain access to a data­base he says will assist his efforts.

Gov­er­nor Scott’s con­tro­ver­sial pro­gram is intended, he says, to ensure that non-​​citizens in Florida don’t vote. The state is match­ing infor­ma­tion on driver’s licenses (which often includes cit­i­zen­ship sta­tus) against lists of reg­is­tered vot­ers. Over 2,600 let­ters were sent — 87 per­cent to African-​​Americans and His­pan­ics — inform­ing selected vot­ers that they would be dropped from the vot­ing rolls unless they could prove their cit­i­zen­ship within thirty days. Many of the peo­ple indi­cated as non-​​citizens on their licenses have since become cit­i­zens, and sim­ply not altered their records. In Miami-​​Dade County, forty of those receiv­ing notice have been shown to be non-​​citizens. More than five hun­dred have already sup­plied proof of cit­i­zen­ship, pro­vid­ing (so far) more than a ten-​​to-​​one ratio of false positives.

DOJ has pointed out that Florida is one of six­teen states with a proven his­tory of sup­press­ing minor­ity votes. Accord­ing to the 1965 Vot­ing Rights Act, these states may alter nei­ther their vot­ing pro­ce­dures nor their voter reg­is­tra­tion laws with­out fed­eral approval. Since this attempted purge of the vot­ing lists was not preap­proved, it is illegal.

Fur­ther­more, fed­eral law pro­hibits any state from remov­ing vot­ers from the rolls within ninety days of an elec­tion — and Florida has a pri­mary com­ing up on August 14. There is noth­ing about Gov­er­nor Scott’s efforts that is either rea­son­able or legal, and the DOJ has ordered him to stop.

Other orga­ni­za­tions are also weigh­ing in. A His­panic civic orga­ni­za­tion and two nat­u­ral­ized cit­i­zens — backed by the The Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union (ACLU) — have also filed suit to halt the voter purge, and specif­i­cally named Florida Sec­re­tary of State Ken Det­zner as a defen­dant. The Lawyers’ Com­mit­tee for Civil Rights Under Law (LCCRUL) and the law firm of Weil, Got­shal & Manges, LLP, have joined the suit.

As of a few days ago, county elec­tion offi­cials through­out Florida have halted efforts to com­ply with Gov­er­nor Scott’s voter purge. Vicki Davis, pres­i­dent of the Florida State Asso­ci­a­tion of Super­vi­sors of Elec­tions, said, “Too many vot­ers on the state’s list turned out to actu­ally be citizens.”

None of this deters Gov­er­nor Scott, who has pledged to forge ahead, and has accused the Depart­ment of Jus­tice of “stonewalling” his pro­gram. Despite the Vot­ing Rights Act, and despite vio­lat­ing the law by remov­ing vot­ers too close to an elec­tion, the Gov­er­nor has announced plans to sue the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity for access to the Sys­tem­atic Alien Ver­i­fi­ca­tion for Enti­tle­ments (SAVE) data­base, to allow him to con­tinue purg­ing reg­is­tered vot­ers. This is nei­ther the pur­pose nor the intended use of this data­base, so Florida has been denied per­mis­sion to use it. Addi­tion­ally, “Jus­tice offi­cials said it takes more than a name or birth­date to prove a match in the fed­eral immi­gra­tion data­base and that Florida has already con­ceded it doesn’t have the right data.”

We often hear of Repub­li­can desires for “tort reform,” to stem the tide of friv­o­lous law­suits clog­ging our judi­cial sys­tem. Gov­er­nor Scott’s suit should be con­sid­ered a standard-​​bearer in this regard.

In 2000, thou­sands of reg­is­tered vot­ers, most of them black, were turned away from Florida’s polls. Vot­ing machines in Florida’s heav­ily Demo­c­ra­tic and Jew­ish dis­tricts reg­is­tered a sur­pris­ingly large num­ber of votes for inde­pen­dent can­di­date Pat Buchanan. Buchanan him­self stated that he believed most of those votes were intended for Vice Pres­i­dent Al Gore. These and other irreg­u­lar­i­ties gave Gov­er­nor George W. Bush enough votes to give Amer­ica eight years of his admin­is­tra­tion. It seems clear that Rick Scott is attempt­ing to man­u­fac­ture a sim­i­lar out­come for for­mer Gov­er­nor Mitt Romney.

This drama is far from over. Stay tuned.

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