Florida Election Supervisors Refuse Voter Purges

County officials say the state's list is flawed
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 8, 2012 12:26 PM CDT
Florida Election Supervisors Refuse Voter Purges
An unidentified voter casts his ballot at a fire station in Coral Gables, Fla.   (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

In Florida voting, the buck stops with county election supervisors—and they're not letting noncitizen voter purges go on any longer. "We’re just not going to do this," says one. "The list is bad," he says of a list of 2,700 people whom the state calls possible noncitizens. "And this is illegal." But secretary of state Ken Detzner isn't giving up; he plans to work with the supervisors to get the purge process moving again, the Miami Herald reports.

He tells CNN he aims to eliminate "felons, people that are mentally incompetent, and those deceased," calling it "illogical" that "those individuals might have more rights," or that "noncitizens would have more rights, than somebody who is a felon." Detzner blames the federal government for problems with the process: US officials won't let state leaders see a federal citizenship database, he says, calling the feds' actions illegal. Some 40 people have been labeled noncitizens thus far; 500 have been ruled citizens, and another 2,000 haven't been confirmed as either one. (A Tampa paper likened Gov. Rick Scott to Alabama's George Wallace because of the purge. Click for that.)

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