Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner says providing elections supervisors with the records they want before removing potential non-citizens from the voting rolls won't be a problem. Detzner will be traveling the state next month to meet with local elections officials before resuming a controversial voter purge.
Last year's version of the purge sparked lawsuits and an outcry from civil-rights groups because most of the flagged voters were minorities. Now elections supervisors say they won't participate unless the state provides proof that the voters aren't citizens and therefore not eligible to vote.Detzner said Monday that Florida's new access to a federal database will make it easier.
"I don’t know why we couldn’t provide them any documentation", said Detzner. "And now, since we secured access to the SAVE database, I think we’ll be able to give them validation through the SAVE database and something in writing."
Last year Detzner's office sent supervisors a list of 2,600 potential non-citizens who were registered to vote. But the supervisors dropped the purge after finding that many of the voters on Detzner's list were naturalized citizens – some even born in the US.
85 were found to be ineligible and dropped from the rolls.
Detzner was appointed by Governor Rick Scott, who has pushed for the voting purge. After the US Department of Justice sued Scott over the purge, he took the Obama administration to court to get access to the database.