Ken Detzner took over as Sec. of State when the previous one, Kurt Browning, refused to go along with Rick Scott's incredible assault on voting rights and his voter purge that even Rick Scott admitted was flawed. Recall that Detzner put together a list in 2012 of about 180,000 "potential" noncitizens that conservatives touted to rile up their base. The problem was that it was complete bull*%&. A quick examination showed that the most of the names didn't belong on there. The most fundamental scrutiny of the list had it whittled down to 2600 names. It was then sent to election supervisors, and they found it riddled with errors. Democrats noted it disproportionately targeted Hispanics. It was whittled further down to 207. Then 198. Finally - 85. Keep in mind that this is out of almost 19.5 million people.
And how many prosecutable cases of voter fraud? One. Just one. And he wasn't even a Democrat. (I am gleeful that after all the money was spent they snared only one "gun enthusiast" who probably voted for Scott.)
So what does Rick Scott do for his election this year after such an epic fail? Apparently, weighs his options and decides all the bad publicity is worth trying to purge hundreds of thousands of voters again.
The ensuing bad publicity? Nothing a bus tour can't fix. Detzner conducted the "Project Integrity Tour" across Florida to "inform" the public about the new and improved voter purge.
THIS time things will be different.
THIS time, they will be much worse.
Now they are using the Department of Homeland Security System Alien Verification for Entitlements Program (SAVE) to cross check our voter rolls. If you are not on this list, its enough for the Scott team to kick you off.
Here's the problem from the DOH's own website:
the inability of the SAVE Program to verify [a person's] citizenship does not necessarily mean that [the person is] not a citizen of the United States and ineligible to vote
So we have the Department of Homeland Security’s Memorandum of Agreement with Florida specifically stating it shouldn't be used to crosscheck citizens. Furthermore, this database is a fee-based system, which would make it far more expensive than the 2012 purge.
So why the hell are we using this database?
Rick Scott is making this database the end all, be all.... you had better be on it. This means that a lot of people who get kicked off, (people who have the surname 'Hernandez' for example), will have to spend a lot of time and money restoring what never should have been taken. A naturalized citizen will need to show their naturalization certificate-and God help them if they lost it. A replacement copy will take months and cost $345.
No answers as to why Rick Scott and Ken Detzner think it isn't enough to just fill out the affidavit of citizenship on the voting registration. That is a much simpler and cheaper way to prosecute and puts the onus on the state, not the citizen.
There are also no answers as to why thy are pushing an issue that doesn't exist. No research has been provided to anyone on this magical tour why the issue of in-person voter fraud is worth spending so much on--especially considering not one of the 67 Supervisors of Elections has asked for it.
People stood in line up to 9 hours in South Florida to cast ballots because they were angry their rights were being trampled on. You would think slick rick would have learned by now.
A good example of Scott's ironic cluelessness is that he just picked a Hispanic LG to attract the Hispanic vote, and is now trying this purge nonsense again in order to get rid of as much of the Hispanic vote as he can. I kind of wonder if he can even blow his nose without directional assistance.
ReplyDelete