It appears any great fears about a voter purge significantly affecting the Florida election this year have been calmed. Thanks to a highly scrutinized process—and don't let anyone convince you the scrutiny was anything less than critical—Gov. Rick Scott's efforts to purge non-citizens from the polls resulted in just over 200 people getting cleared off voter rolls.
All but two counties (including quite sadly the one in which I live) had stopped purging from Scott's once-mega list of potentially fraudulent voters. The number of voters being dumped now seems a very reasonable assessment of how many people might be in a state of nearly 20 million people who were both illegal immigrants and who had the gall to register to vote. Truthfully, the bulk of the 207 people being purged from the rolls likely never voted in a single election.
The big takeaway to me is that Florida officials who embarked an obviously partisan mission tinged with racism ultimately did nothing but demonstrate how small a problem in-person voter fraud actually is. This has been another embarrassing episode in a state with a pungent reputation for protecting voters' rights.
People believe Trump only when they want to
8 hours ago
I'd appreciate a source for the bulk of the 207 people purged not voting in a single election.
ReplyDeleteI'm not in favor of a purge happening a few months before a major election, and I'm sure Scott's motives were not solely to ensure the integrity of the electoral process, but not too long ago, we elected a president by a difference of 537 votes in this state of nearly 20 million people.
--Tom
Exactly. This total, if they all voted for the same candidate, would not even have flipped the 2000 election. And that's presuming they figured out the butterfly ballot and left no hanging chads.
ReplyDeleteThis total alone would not have. But when we're talking about making a binary choice between two candidates, and when the choice is close, it's disingenuous to portray a number of fraudulent ballots as small relative to the total number of ballots cast.
ReplyDelete--Tom
Tom, why does the state put so much effort into purging ex-felons and immigrants from the voter rolls and so little into making sure that the number of absentee ballots cast by the recently-deceased is cut down? To portray this as an effort to reduce voter fraud is disingenuous, and some rather blatant statements made on Voter ID laws by politicians around the nation tell that tale. Nobody disagrees that illegal immigrants should not be allowed to cast votes, but every time Florida's state elections officials at the state level have tried to purge voters in the past 12 years, the result has been an overly broad list which, if implemented, would purge more legal voters than illegal ones. Are you suggesting it was so important to make sure these 207 people do not vote that it was worth risking the right to vote for the other 2,400 legal voters whose name appeared on the state list? I have been following voter purge issues my entire professional career, and in every case, demographic groups who traditionally vote Democratic have been targeted with lists which every single time have proved to be too loose in classification.
ReplyDeleteNo, these 207 people should not be allowed to vote, but the attack—an absolutely bigoted and politically motivated one at that—presents a far, far greater threat to our democracy and the basic principles of voting than this statistically insignificant group of voters ever could.
As I said, I don't claim that Rick Scott's motives were pure as the driven snow. I'm just saying that you can't claim that 207 potentially fraudulent ballots are a non-issue because of the total population of the state.
ReplyDeleteBut since you brought it up, what's the process for removing the recently deceased from the voting rolls?
--Tom