State: 46 of 86 allegedly illegal voters cut from Florida rolls had previously voted
By Dara Kam
Palm Beach Post Capital Bureau
Tallahassee —
Eighty-six voters who are likely not U.S. citizens – including one Palm Beach County woman – have been removed from the rolls as a result of Gov. Rick Scott’s non-citizen purge now being challenged in federal court, according to Department of State records released Friday.
More than half of them appear to have voted in the past, the records showed.
The 86 voters would amount to about 3 percent of the 2,600 voters flagged as potentially ineligible by Scott’s administration, but it’s unclear how many of them were actually included on the list, which was distributed to elections supervisors by Secretary of State Ken Detzner in April.
Greenacres voter Anabilil Gomez was removed from the voting rolls on May 3, the records show. But she was not on Detzner’s list, and Detzner’s spokesman, Chris Cate, said it is unknown yet whether Gomez or others were on the master list of 182,000 from which the April list was made.
The list of 182,000 has not released to the public.
Gomez could not be reached for comment Friday.
Although Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher speculated that Gomez came to the elections office and asked to be removed, even though Bucher says she never sent letters to the suspect voters notifying them that they needed to prove their citizenship as Detzner’s office ordered her and the 66 other county supervisors to do.
“It looks like she came to the counter and told us because we sent her a voter card Dec. 11. The only way we would have that information is if she was telling us because we never sent the letters out,” Bucher said, adding that others came to her office “trying to give us copies of their documents” to ensure they would not be removed from the rolls.
Bucher said her office sent Gomez a voter registration card in December but the woman had not voted in any election.
But state department officials said 46 people on the list of 86 had voted, including about a dozen whose voting records pre-date 2006. More than half of the voters on the list were registered in Lee County.
Scott’s staff said the information was a vindication of the purge process, which has been criticized by Democrats and elections supervisors of both parties.
“We now know with absolute certainty that a growing number of non-U.S. citizens aren’t just illegally registered to vote here in Florida, they are also casting ballots and influencing election outcomes,” Scott spokesman Brian Burgess wrote in an e-mail.
Also Friday, the ACLU and the Lawyers’ Committee on Civil Rights Under Law sued Scott’s administration in federal court in Tampa to try to stop the voter roll purge. The suit was filed on behalf of two Hillsborough County naturalized citizens and asked a three-judge panel to stop the purge until the process is cleared by the U.S. Justice Department.
Federal law requires “preclearance” of voting or elections changes in jurisdictions with a history of discrimination, and five counties in Florida – Collier, Hardee, Hendry, Hillsborough and Monroe – require such preclearance.
Detzner has not asked for federal preclearance for those counties.
State: 46 of 86 allegedly illegal voters cut from Florida... | www.palmbeachpost.com
