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State Voter Purge List Shrinks, Agreement Reached

A controversial list of 2,600 allegedly illegal voters has been whittled to 207, Florida election officials said Wednesday after running the names through a federal immigration database.

Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner said the names, about 8 percent of the initial list, will be forwarded to local election officials as early as next week.

The revised list was released the same day as an agreement was announced between the state and voting rights groups over efforts to remove non-citizens and other ineligible voters from the ranks.

“We want every Florida voter to be confident that their vote is protected and not hurt in any way by the illegal activity of others,” Detzner said in a statement. “We know that every vote counts, especially here in Florida where only 537 votes decided the presidential election in 2000.”

Wednesday’s announcement marks the latest development in a months-long battle between voting rights advocates, state and federal elections officials over Republican-led efforts to cull the ranks of voters and eliminate those not eligible to cast ballots.

Voting groups, which filed suit in federal court to stop the purge, said the new agreement would help prevent the targeting of minorities, who disproportionately turned up on earlier lists of questionable voters.

“The citizens of Florida have taken another step toward realizing the right to vote, without any undue barriers imposed by the state,” said Penda Hair, co-director of Advancement Project, a plaintiff in the case.

At Gov. Rick Scott’s urging, state election officials last year began looking at whether ineligible voters were showing up in the rolls.

To find out, the state began comparing voting rolls with drivers-license data, coming up with an initial list of 2,600 names it sent to local officials earlier this year. Election supervisors suspended the purge after it became clear that eligible voters were incorrectly included in the non-voter list.

At the center of the controversy was a request by Florida officials to access a federal Department of Homeland Security database that tracks the status of non-citizens. State election officials filed suit to use the system to more accurately determine the status of registered voters.

Under the agreement penned Wednesday, state officials will advise local election supervisors to return to the rolls voters who were removed earlier but can’t be confirmed as non-citizens. Voters who were incorrectly removed from the rolls will receive letters telling them they are indeed eligible to vote.

Also, voters whose names turned up on earlier lists would not be required to vote by provisional ballot.

“Any number of people who are registered to vote and who are not eligible is a serious problem, whether that number is two or 207,” said Howard Simon, executive director of ACLU of Florida, in a statement. “But given the less-than-competent record of state officials in voter purging over the years, Floridians would be right to be skeptical of anything coming from this current purge.”

By The News Service of Florida