Florida’s voter purge likely will continue past mistakes
Secretary of State Ken Detzner’s attempt to establish confidence in Florida’s upcoming purge of voters has raised more questions than it answers.
Rather than providing information on how this round of purges protects the integrity of the voter rolls, his so-called Project Integrity tour has proved that this voter-list-maintenance process lacks transparency, support and validity.
Throughout his meetings with supervisors of elections and the public, Detzner and his staff did not answer many important questions on how the state plans to remove suspected noncitizens from the voter rolls while not repeating the same mistakes of the past.
Despite Project Integrity’s façade of explaining the purge process and touting its validity, several supervisors of elections expressed concern with the use of the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE database and the process of carrying out this purge. Many questions remained unanswered, such as what the potential cost will be and what the procedure will be to correct wrongly targeted voters.
In addition to the questions about the SAVE database, the Secretary of State’s office did not provide start and end dates for the purge, but it stood its ground on potentially carrying out the removal of voters from the rolls up until Election Day. This is the same mistake this office made in 2012, which resulted in a court battle that is still being fought today.
On Oct. 10, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit heard oral arguments in Arcia v. Detzner, regarding the 2012 flawed Florida voter purge, which targeted hundreds of citizens for removal from the voting rolls. The Fair Elections Legal Network, of which I am president, joined other groups in the case, which was argued by the law firm of Jenner & Block pro bono.
The case is an appeal from the October 2012 ruling in District Court which, in our view, incorrectly held that the National Voter Registration Act’s requirement that voter-list-maintenance programs must be stopped during the last 90 days of a federal election did not apply to Florida’s purge of suspected noncitizens.
This is just the latest battle in Florida’s history of problematic purges. Yet, the secretary of state’s actions make it obvious that Florida has not learned from these mistakes.
Detzner’s insistence that the purge could continue up until Election Day shows a disregard for the rights of citizens who are improperly removed. Florida’s history of voters being subject to inaccurate purges, from being mistakenly identified as felons in 2000 to being incorrectly identified as noncitizens in 2012, should be reason for caution.
Yet the secretary’s office seems determined to launch similarly problematic purges year after year. It is important for voter rolls to be maintained and updated in an efficient, fair and legal manner. Florida’s supervisors do that year-round as a regular function of their job, but they halt list maintenance near elections to ensure that voters have time to correct any errors.
The 90- day quiet period established by the NVRA exists to provide that exact protection. Without it, voters can be wrongly removed without adequate time to correct the mistake, thereby losing their basic right to vote.
Rather than touring the state in an attempt at rationalizing a new round of purges, the secretary of state needs to talk to his supervisors of elections, who already have systems in place to clean their respective rolls and have not found evidence of noncitizens voting. He should answer their questions and address their concerns and those of the public.
This new purge plan can only hurt Florida voters and cost taxpayers money. Dissension from supervisors of elections only gives the public more reason to doubt the legitimacy of this process.
Looking at Florida’s history and the results of the recent meetings, the public should be concerned about the secretary of state’s latest proposal.