The state of Florida is in the midst of a clean-up of its voter rolls. Christian Adams reported on May 16 that the purge had already turned up 53,000 dead voters in the state. The purge also has an eye for getting non-citizens off the rolls, under the reasonable idea that since non-citizens cannot legally vote, they should not be on the rolls.
But Eric Holder’s Department of Justice has other ideas.
The Justice Department ordered Florida’s elections division to halt a systematic effort to find and purge the state’s voter rolls of noncitizen voters.
Florida’s effort appears to violate both the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which protects minorities, and the 1993 National Voter Registration Act – which governs voter purges – T. Christian Herren Jr., the Justice Department’s lead civil rights lawyer, wrote in a detailed two-page letter sent late Thursday night.
State officials said they were reviewing the letter. But they indicated they might fight DOJ over its interpretation of federal law and expressed frustration that President Barack Obama’s administration has stonewalled the state’s noncitizen voter hunt for nine months.
“We are firmly committed to doing the right thing and preventing ineligible voters from being able to cast a ballot,” said Chris Cate, spokesman for Secretary of State Ken Detzner, who was ordered by Gov. Rick Scott to conduct the search for potentially ineligible voters.
DOJ’s written demand came hours after the agency refused to comment on the matter to The Miami Herald. It also followed a federal court ruling Thursday that struck down a Republican voter-registration law that a judge found too onerous.
For his part, the attorney general declared before a group of black pastors that voter ID and cleaning up voter rolls put minority voting rights “in the balance.” Election integrity obviously isn’t the people’s attorney’s highest priority.
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