A coalition of minority activists and Democratic lawmakers protested in front of Governor Rick Scott’s office at the state capitol on Monday. They accused Scott of intentionally trying to remove non-white voters from the rolls in Florida.
Joined by members of the NAACP and the Florida Democratic Hispanic Caucus, incoming House Democratic leader Mark Pafford claimed voter fraud is basically non-existent in the state.
He says any effort to remove ineligible voters is simply a waste of time and money, and the group called on Scott to stop looking for more illegal voters. The protest comes as Florida’s secretary of state plans to review files, using a federal entitlement database to verify voter information.Pafford says the governor is trying to weed out potential Democrat votes to win re-election.
"Races in this state are very close. We’ve seen senators' races, legislative races, municipal races, and frankly the last governor’s race was very, very close in terms of the number of people voting and the difference in terms of who won and who lost."
This is Scott's second try at removing ineligible voters. A purge in 2012 angered local election supervisors because some eligible voters encountered obstacles at the polls. That purge was halted due to several lawsuits and questions surrounding the integrity of the database used at the time.
Scott has said repeatedly that only legally-registered voters should be allowed to cast a ballot, and his goal is to prevent legitimate votes from being diluted.