Feds OK Fla. access to citizens list

[Freddie Stubbs]

Source: Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a victory for Republicans, the federal government has agreed to let Florida use a law enforcement database to challenge people's right to vote if they are suspected of not being U.S. citizens.

The agreement, made in a letter to Florida Gov. Rick Scott's administration that was obtained by The Associated Press, grants the state access to a list of resident noncitizens maintained by the Department of Homeland Security. The Obama administration had denied Florida's request for months, but relented after a judge ruled in the state's favor in a related voter-purge matter.

Voting rights groups, while acknowledging that noncitizens have no right to vote, have expressed alarm about using such data for a purpose not originally intended: purging voter lists of ineligible people. They say voter purges less than four months before a presidential election might leave insufficient time to correct mistakes stemming from faulty data or other problems.

Democrats say that the government's concession is less troubling than some GOP-controlled states' push to require voters to show photo identification.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/ap-newsbreak-feds-ok-fla-access-citizens-list-165524187.html?_esi=1

[midnight]

1. Gop- Same crap different day.....

[DCKit]

2. If they can't "mistakenly" purge citizens with Hispanic last names from the voting list....

it'll end up helping us.

[Kingofalldems]

3. Looks like your boys won one

Good for you.

[otohara]

4. Will They Publish Names?

in a paper or on the internet to at least give friends/family the chance to look and challenge?

This mean's this will be okay-ed in CO also.

[Turbineguy]

5. And then when they find

the 6 or so non-US citizens who were falsely registered, Florida can tell the tax payers just how much they spent on this.

[Iliyah]

6. The Cuban community will

love this - LOL

Anywho, it will backfire big time, especially the Cubans and Haitians that came across the ocean to 1. get away from an oppress government; 2. Find a better life.

Way to go GOP. . .Oh and seniors as well as veterans, y'know the ones that fought to keep us free.

FREEDOM AND LIBERTY. . . . . . yeah right. . . . .assholes....

[valerief]

7. Too bad voters don't have the same rights to Florida's vote tabulations. They're super-secret. nt

[robinlynne]

8. i wonder if ever any non citizen has attempted to vote. Or managed to register to vote.

The idea itself is rather preposterous.

[Igel]

10. Why?

I've known Americans who wanted to try to vote in the Czech Republic. They lived there and thought it unreasonable that they didn't have a say in how "their" country was run.

I've known non-citizens who worked and had Social Security cards and who had drivers licenses. I've known non-citizens who were politically active and campaigned in the workplace or classroom for presidential candidates. You don't need any more documentation than that to register to vote.

I even watched a DMV clerk try to convince a guy who just got a drivers license, having shown fraudulent documents to get it, to register to vote. I know he showed fraudulent documents because he told the clerk that he was here illegally and wasn't allowed to vote. She said it didn't matter, he'd vote Democratic and they needed his vote, and since he just got his license he could register then and there. He laughed and walked off. So the DMV clerk was perfectly willing to register a non-citizen to vote. "Managing to vote" in this case wasn't the problem; the guy had to keep the clerk from registering him.

Had he voted, nobody would have caught him. His name wouldn't have been in an immigrant database. He'd have been given a driver's license and the clerk entered information into the state database showing he was a citizen. To show he was illegally registered, somebody would have actually looked at the documents he showed to prove citizenship and show they were fraudulent. The only way it would be easy would be if he were arrested and shown to be here illegally, and if somebody at ICE then checked the voting records to see if he'd registered. But voting illegally is a *state* offence, and ICE is federal.

[Freddie Stubbs]

12. Yes:

http://www.abc-7.com/story/16662854/2012/02/02/nbc2-investigates-voter-fraud

[robinlynne]

13. interesting. they are not aware of being registered in most cases cited. possibly not their signatur

signatures on the voter registration. possibly big old election fraud, not voter fraud.

[ohgeewhiz]

9. How many Jose' Rodrigues do people think there are

in FL? About 1,000? If ONE of them is an illegal immigrant, ALL will be purged, right??

I mean, how would Republicans know who is who?

Same for how many Juan Castro's, or Juanita Vargas'.

This is very threatening to the possibility of FL voting Obama, with so many thousands kicked off the lists, just like in 2000.

[demgrrrll]

11. I doubt that.

[armodem08]

14. Not as bad as I thought at first...

"Florida has agreed that it can challenge voters only if the state provides a "unique identifier," such as an "alien number," for each person in question. Alien numbers generally are assigned to foreigners living in the country legally, often with visas or other permits such as green cards."

This is a huge caveat, because the whole reason Florida couldn't use the database previously was that they didn't have these numbers. This is a face-saving decision, but not one likely to disenfranchise voters.