For Florida's GOP, it's all about keeping the state out of President Obama's win column.
(Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
It's all about Florida this week, again. Republican Gov. Rick Scott—through his hand-picked Secretary of State Ken Detzner—told the Department of Justice that it could
pound sand on its demand that the state stop purging voters from its registrations rolls. The Justice Department, they
say, "doesn’t understand two federal voting laws at the heart of the dispute and was protecting potentially illegal voters more than legal ones."
In tone and substance, the letter all but dares the Justice Department to sue Florida for allegedly violating the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), nicknamed “motor voter.”
They will probably get their wish.
There are two pieces of good news out of Florida, however. First the elected folks in charge of actually conducting elections in Florida, the 67 county elections supervisors, have revolted and will not remove any voter from the registration rolls on the basis of the list provided by the state. Additionally, a federal judge this week blocked a provision of the state's new, highly restrictive omnibus voter suppression law. In this case, it was the restrictions voter registration organizations, like the League of Women voters. These groups had stopped registering new voters, but with this injunction they are back on the job.
Rick Scott says all this is to "make sure that the other individuals that are voting have a right to vote." Which is, of course, bullshit. It's about preventing as many people as possible from voting and trying to steal an election. Because voter fraud in Florida is close to non-existent, as it is in every other state.
Ion Sancho, the 24-year veteran election supervisor in Leon County, said the voter database has allowed local election officials to catch potential fraud before it occurs. New registrations are checked by the state against other state records to ensure that the person actually exists before the registration is official.
Fraud, he said, simply isn't much of an issue.
"You are more likely to walk out of your office and get hit by a bolt of lightning," he said.
For more of the week's news, make the jump below the fold.
In other news:
- California is thankfully going against the curve and is making voting easier. The state assembly passed legislation to allow registration on election day.
- While the recall vote in Wisconsin didn't turn out as well as any of us had worked so hard for, there's a ray of good news in how voter suppression efforts failed to keep young people and blacks away from the polls.
In Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett’s seven-point loss to Walker, voters aged 18–29 increased their slice of the electorate from 15 percent in 2010 to 16 percent yesterday. Black voters came out mob-deep. John Nichols, who’s been covering Wisconsin inside-out for The Nation, voter ID legislation this week. NH voters would be required to show photo identification to cast a ballot. A compromise by the House allows college students to use their school ID as identification for the following year, but that provision would then expire. That's all if the bill is actually signed into law. Gov. John Lynch could very well veto this one, as he did a similar bill in 2011.
- The Minnesota Supreme Court will decide this summer if a constitutional amendment to require voter ID will be on this fall's ballot.
- North Carolina's House Republicans have been forced into a "kinder, gentler" voter ID law over the threat from a veto by Gov. Bev Perdue. Overriding that veto would require Democratic votes that likely are not going to happen with the stricter ID law they had originally intended to pass.
The compromise measure being negotiated would allow voters to show a broad range of documents to prove identity, including bank statements, utility bills or any government documents with name and address. Voters without such documents would be required to show that their signature matched their voter registration form.