“Welcome To The Post Civil Rights Era”: Gov Rick Scott To Launch New Purge Of Florida Voter Rolls
Gov. Rick Scott will soon launch a new hunt for noncitizens on Florida’s voter roll, a move that’s sure to provoke new cries of a voter “purge” as Scott ramps up his own re-election effort.
Similar searches a year ago were rife with errors, found few ineligible voters and led to lawsuits by advocacy groups that said it disproportionately targeted Hispanics, Haitians and other minority groups. Those searches were handled clumsily and angered county election supervisors, who lost confidence in the state’s list of names.
“It was sloppy, it was slapdash and it was inaccurate,” said Polk County Supervisor of Elections Lori Edwards. “They were sending us names of people to remove because they were born in Puerto Rico. It was disgusting.”
The state’s list of suspected non-U.S. citizens shrank from 182,000 to 2,600 to 198 before election supervisors suspended their searches as the presidential election drew near. “That was embarrassing,” said elections chief Jerry Holland in Jacksonville’s Duval County. “It has to be a better scrub of names than we had before.”
Election supervisors remain wary of a new removal effort, which the U.S. Supreme Court effectively authorized in June when it struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act. That ruling nullified a federal lawsuit in Tampa that sought to stop new searches for noncitizen voters, and Scott quickly renewed his call for action.
“If there’s anybody that we think isn’t voting properly, from the standpoint that they didn’t have a right to vote, I think we need to do an investigation,” Scott said the day of the high court decision. Last fall, Scott joined the Republican Party in a fundraising appeal that accused Democrats of defending the right of noncitizens to vote.
Scott’s top elections official, Secretary of State Ken Detzner, is now creating a new list of suspected noncitizen voters by cross-checking state voter data with a federal database managed by the Department of Homeland Security.
Detzner’s director of elections, Maria Matthews, sent a letter to election supervisors Friday, promising “responsible measures that ensure due process and the integrity of Florida’s voter rolls” and vowing to include supervisors “in the planning and decision-making.”
Sen. Rene Garcia, R-Hialeah, chairman of the Florida Hispanic Legislative Caucus, said Detzner told him the state would resume its purge of potential noncitizens within 60 days. “I’ve been told that they will go slow,” Garcia said. “I’m completely confident that the process will work.”
Hillsborough County halted its purge last year after several voters on a list of 72 flagged by the state proved their citizenship.
A voter whose citizenship is questioned has the right to provide proof of citizenship in a due-process system that includes certified letters and legal notices.
If the next list is anything like the last one, its burden will fall most heavily on urban counties with large Hispanic populations, notably Miami-Dade.
“Ineligible voters will be removed when their ineligibility is substantiated by credible and reliable data,” said Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor Penelope Townsley.
Townsley and a half-dozen county election supervisors interviewed across the state were emphatic that anyone who is not a U.S. citizen should not be able to cast a ballot. But they also say the state must meticulously document any case of a suspected ineligible voter and share all data with the counties — including access to the federal database known as SAVE.
Some supervisors remain irked that Detzner’s office still has not granted them access to the database after promising to do so last fall.
Okaloosa County election supervisor Paul Lux said the state’s questionable data damaged relations between the state and counties last year.
“We said then, ‘If you can’t give us good data, why should we kill ourselves vetting it?’ ” Lux said.
Relations have improved, but Lux said he’s not hopeful that the SAVE database will be much better.
“If the federal government is as good at collecting data as they are with doing other things, then I’ve got to wonder about the quality of this data,” Lux said. “If we get the information sooner, we can get started and have plenty of time to do our own due diligence.”
Maria Rodriguez, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, which opposed previous purge efforts, said the state’s motive is to remove poor and minority voters who are less likely to vote Republican.
“For every voter they purge, we will nationalize and register many, many more,” she said.
Voter purges aren’t necessarily a bad thing, said Myrna Pérez, deputy director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school.
She said many states require voter-list maintenance efforts to prune the rolls of voters who are no longer eligible or who have died, but purges close to an election should be avoided. “They offer lots of opportunities for eligible voters to get improperly removed because they frequently happen in a rushed, haphazard manner behind closed doors,” Pérez said. “And the data is usually flawed.”
On Twitter, Pasco County’s election supervisor, Brian Corley, said: “Info from FL SOS [Secretary of State] must be credible & reliable! Integrity of voter rolls is paramount!”
By: Steve Bousquet and Michael Van Sickler, The Miami Herald, August 4, 2013
“It Was A Bad Bill”: A Step Forward, Florida To Hold Hearings On Stand Your Ground Law
Florida House of Representatives Speaker Will Weatherfold (R) announced on Friday that Florida legislators will hold hearings in the fall concerning the state’s “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law, which allows people to use deadly force in self-defense when they believe their life is at risk.
The announcement comes nearly a month after a not-guilty verdict was reached in the George Zimmerman trial. Two jurors stated that because of the Stand Your Ground law, they had no choice but to acquit Zimmerman, who fatally shot unarmed African-American teenager Trayvon Martin.
After the acquittal, Martin’s parents were joined by civic leaders, students, and political figures — including President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder — in urging Florida to review the law.
“Across Florida, representatives are receiving calls, letters, visits and emails from constituents with diverse opinions on ‘Stand Your Ground,’” Weatherfold said in his announcement.
He also asked: “Does the law keep the innocent safer? Is it being applied fairly? Are there ways we can make this law clearer and more understandable?”
These are the same questions being asked across Florida and the nation by those who fear that the law only protects a few privileged groups of people.
Critics argue that the law is not applied fairly across the board, and also allows anyone who deems another person threatening – even if only because of race or gender – to use lethal force against that person.
Race also plays a significant role in how a person is prosecuted in the context of the law.
A national Quinnipiac University poll released on Friday found that most voters support the Stand Your Ground laws, but that gender, race, and ideology divide Americans on the question of whether to retreat or use deadly force in self-defense. The poll also found that a majority of white voters and men support the laws, black voters generally oppose them, and women are more evenly divided.
Just a year ago, Representative Dennis Baxley (R-FL) told MSNBC that since the Stand Your Ground law went into effect in 2005, Florida has seen a drop in violent crime. In an interview with PBS Newshour, Baxley added that he thought the law “has saved thousands of people’s lives.”
Crime rates in Florida had been declining years before Stand Your Ground took effect, however, and there is no way to prove the law is the reason behind the decline.
Others contend that “justifiable” deaths have actually increased since Stand Your Ground was implemented. Economist Mouhcine Guettabi, an assistant professor at the University of Alaska at Anchorage, conducted a study by taking data from the 29 states that do not have “stand your ground” laws, and “weighted key factors like personal income, population density, percentages of white, black, Hispanic and Asian residents, and the crime rate.”
At the end of his study, Guettabi found that he could attribute 158 more deaths per year since the passage of Stand Your Ground in Florida; that number dropped to 144 when excluding the 14 accidental gun deaths.
Guettabi concluded that “crime rates did not go up or down after the law was added,” but “gun deaths were higher than they would have been without ‘stand your ground.’”
Former Florida Senator Les Miller has now come forward to say that he regrets voting in favor of the law and added: “It was a bad bill.”
In July, protesters met with Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) to discuss the law. Once the meeting was over, Scott told the protesters that he supported the bill and would not call a special session. Instead, Scott called for a day of prayer that following Sunday. Scott went on to urge protesters and critics of the law to call their local legislators and provide examples of why they believe the law has the potential to result in more violence.
Chairman of the Criminal Justice Subcommittee Matt Gaetz (R) responded to Weatherford’s announcement by firmly stating, “I don’t intend to move one damn comma on the ‘stand your ground’ law. I’m fully supportive of the law as it’s written.”
Additionally, Gaetz claimed “any aberrational circumstances that have resulted are due to errors at the trial court level.”
Senate President Don Gaetz (R), the chairman’s father, has also maintained his support for the law.
Still, protesters are optimistic about the hearings.
Philip Agnew, head of demonstration group Dream Defenders, said, “It’s a critical step. We’re excited about having an open debate.”
Weatherford has not yet set a formal date for the hearings or stated how long they are expected to last.
By: Elissa Gomez, The National Memo, August 5, 2013
“Marching Back Across The Bridge”: Once Again, White Southerners Get To Decide Who’s Worthy To Vote
With a kind of sick fascination, I’m trying to keep track with how rapidly southern Republicans take advantage of yesterday’s Supreme Court decision striking down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act to restrict the franchise. You’d think after years of claiming that Section 4 and Section 5 were unnecessary, they’d pause a decent interval before proving the point of voting rights advocates that prior review of voting changes in the Deep South were a practical necessity. But oh no, per this AP story from Bill Barrow:
Across the South, Republicans are working to take advantage of a new political landscape after a divided U.S. Supreme Court freed all or part of 15 states, many of them in the old Confederacy, from having to ask Washington’s permission before changing election procedures in jurisdictions with histories of discrimination.
After the high court announced its momentous ruling Tuesday, officials in Texas and Mississippi pledged to immediately implement laws requiring voters to show photo identification before getting a ballot. North Carolina Republicans promised they would quickly try to adopt a similar law. Florida now appears free to set its early voting hours however Gov. Rick Scott and the GOP Legislature please. And Georgia’s most populous county likely will use county commission districts that Republican state legislators drew over the objections of local Democrats.
Meanwhile, in Washington, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was a lonely Republican voice indicating, however nonspecifically, an interest in congressional action to “fix” Section 4. From the House Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader, we’ve heard crickets. And across the South, we’ve heard cheers from Republicans eager to return to a time when the feds didn’t interfere with the sovereign ability of white southerners to decide who was worthy to vote. It’s like watching a tape of the 1965 march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma in reverse.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, June 26, 2013
“Timely Injustice”: Florida Is Not Killing People Fast Enough
At great political peril, George Ryan did the right thing.
Not to canonize the man. After all, the then-governor of Illinois was later imprisoned on corruption charges.
But that doesn’t change the fact that, in 2000, stung that 13 inmates had been exonerated and freed from death row in the previous 23 years, Ryan committed an act of profound moral courage, imposing a moratorium on capital punishment. In 2003, in the waning days of his term, he one-upped himself, commuting every death sentence in his state.
Recalling what Gov. George Ryan once did provides interesting context as Floridians and death penalty opponents around the country wait to see what Gov. Rick Scott will do.
Florida’s chief executive has on his desk awaiting his signature — or, dare we hope, his veto — a piece of legislation called the Timely Justice Act, passed by his state legislature in the apparent belief Florida is not killing people fast enough.
There are 404 people awaiting execution in Florida. We learn from a report by my colleague, Mary Ellen Klas, that 155 of them have been there longer than 20 years, and 10 have been there longer than 35 years. The average wait: 13 years.
The act would require the governor to sign a death warrant within 30 days after a review by the state Supreme Court. Execution would have to take place within 180 days. Additionally, the bill bars attorneys from using certain defense strategies. Granted, it also contains provisions favorable to inmates, including one penalizing lawyers who provide ineffective counsel, but that fig leaf does not mitigate the danger of a bill that, in effect, creates a fast track to the death chamber.
This measure, I feel constrained to point out, is brought to you by the same legislative body that brought you the ill-conceived Stand Your Ground law that has lately led people to call Florida the “gunshine state.” This latest sop to frontier justice is necessary, we’re told, because, as an editorial by Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers puts it, delayed executions are “an affront to justice — especially for victims’ families.”
Beg pardon — and I know this will be controversial — but I’m tired of hearing what we owe victim’s families. I speak from no deficit of compassion for them. I am, for goodness sake, a member of a victim’s family, albeit his extended family. R.I.P., Ted McCoy, my brother-in-law, who was murdered 20 years ago in Los Angeles.
That said, there’s something … uncomfortably barbarous in this idea that we as a society owe those families blood as recompense for the pain they have endured.
More to the point, there’s this: Since the death penalty was reinstated in the mid-’70s, Florida has executed 75 people. But it has exonerated 24, many of whom spent more than a decade on death row. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Florida has the highest error rate in the country.
So how can a state that gets it wrong at least one time in every four want to speed up the process? Does no one care about the increased likelihood of executing someone who committed no crime?
We are always called upon to be solicitous of the pain suffered by victims’ families. Where is our solicitude for innocent people, wrong place, wrong time, people — usually indigent people of color — who are rushed, perjured, bumbled, erred and “oopsed” onto death row? Why does their pain affect us less? Why are they less deserving of our compassion? Are they not victims, too?
To his lasting credit, Illinois’ former governor came to recognize capital punishment as the moral sinkhole it is. It is probably too much to hope Florida’s governor will do the same. But at a minimum he must veto this mistake in waiting. The bill his legislature has sent him imposes something that may indeed be timely.
But it sure as hell is not justice.
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., The National Memo, May 20, 2013
“Unconscionable But Irrelevant”: Florida GOP Legislature Puts Politics Over People
It seemed like a breakthrough moment. In late February, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), who had made hating “Obamacare” his raison d’etre, announced his support for the Medicaid expansion policy in the Affordable Care Act. The Republican governor said at the time, “I cannot, in good conscience, deny the uninsured access to care.”
It was an open question whether Scott’s principal concerns were with the uninsured or the state hospitals he’s been friendly with in the past, it was nevertheless welcome news for health care advocates. Florida’s governor, an unlikely ally, had cleared the way for bringing health care access to 1.3 million Americans, expanding the reach of Obamacare to new heights.
At least, we thought so at the time. What was unexpected was Rick Scott’s own legislative allies ignoring the governor’s wishes and punishing Florida on purpose.
Scott wouldn’t be the one to “deny Floridians” a part of the health care law — but the Florida legislature had other plans. Lawmakers adjourned Friday after passing a budget that does not include funding for a Medicaid expansion. Unless the Republican-controlled legislature comes back for a special session later this year — which some Democrats are calling for — Florida will not expand Medicaid in 2014.
In Florida, where one in five non-elderly residents lack insurance coverage, the consequences are especially large: An estimated 1.3 million Floridians were expected to gain coverage through the Medicaid expansion. About a quarter of those people — Floridians earning between 100 and 133 percent of the Federal Poverty Line — would still be eligible for tax subsidies on the health insurance exchange.
As we talked about in March, Scott isn’t the only Republican governor in this boat. In Ohio and Arizona, GOP state lawmakers remain reluctant to accept Medicaid expansion, regardless of its benefits, and regardless of the wishes of their Republican partner in the governor’s office.
But the move in Florida is especially jarring given the circumstances — the state has an enormous Medicaid-eligible population, and was poised to receive $66 billion in federal funds over the next decade. What’s more, Florida already has struggling public hospitals, which will now be in even worse shape.
A Democratic state senator called the Medicaid decision “unconscionable,” which is true, but apparently irrelevant to state GOP lawmakers.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, May 6, 2013
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