Non-citizens aren’t to blame for Florida’s voting issues
I read with interest and great surprise that there is an effort to have an amendment to the Florida Constitution to ensure that non-citizens in Florida do not vote (“Couple lead push for change in voting,” March 18).
Of course there is already a provision in both the U.S. Constitution and the Florida Constitution that prevents non citizens from voting. One would think that this is a major problem in the state of Florida or in the country, when the exact opposite in true.
I’m sure we all remember President Trump’s assertion that the reason he lost the popular vote was because millions of non-citizens were voting for Hillary Clinton. He even formed a commission to uncover all this fraud.
Of the 23.5 million votes cast in 2016, there were only 30 incidents across the country of possible non-citizens voting, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. On August 21, 2017, the Brennan Center subpoenaed the records of the President”s Commission on Voter Fraud. Two weeks later, the Commission disbanded and never published any of its efforts. So what is the intent of this effort? Is it once again to allege that all these non-citizens are voting?
We do have major problems with voting in this state, as the last election showed, but it is not because non-citizens are voting. It is because eligible citizens are being suppressed in their right to vote. Thousands of votes were not counted in Florida.
People who believe that vote-by-mail is safe are now seriously doubting that. At least 6,000 vote by mail ballots were not counted because, although the post office received them in time, they were not delivered to the Supervisors of Election in time. There were more 20,000 undervotes for U.S. senator because of faulty ballot designs, according to the Sun Sentinel.
We need election reform in this state and we have bills now, by both parties, to ensure that we do better next time. There has been a history (especially in the South) of not allowing Americans who have been here for centuries (mostly African Americans) to vote. Voting is one of the very reasons that people become citizens.
The League of Women Voters of Florida is at every naturalization ceremony to ensure that all new citizens are registered to vote. The purpose of our Founding Mothers nearly a century ago was to educate and inform voters of their rights and their choices. We don’t want them to be intimidated by an unnecessary amendment that was designed to intimidate new citizens.