Many are "precleared" so it is disputable whether they were in violation. Secondly your second point was in regards to changes in election procedures. It is against the law for illegal votes to be cast by non voters, so the ala decision by a liberal court means little in this case. Procedures were not changed, existing fla statutes are being enforced.
You still do not say whether it is right to have in eligible voters vote. Furthermore a literal reading of the doj opinion would afford greater protection to illegal voters than eligible voters. A socialist court can say otherwise, but it does not make it so. What again is your remedy in this conundrum?
FLORIDA REFUSES TO HALT VOTER REGISTRATION CLEANUP
By: John Hayward
6/7/2012 12:34 PM
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The Florida Department of State has responded to the Justice Departments demand that they terminate efforts to clean ineligible voters, particularly illegal aliens, from their voter registrations.* Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner issued a statement saying the program would continue:
"As Floridas Chief Election Officer, I am committed to ensuring the accuracy of Floridas voter rolls and the integrity of our elections.* It is my duty to protect the right of all eligible voters who are able to participate in the process.* This is the security that voters and candidates expect from us in every election.* The Department will continue to act in a responsible and cautious manner when presented with credible information about potentially ineligible voters.* No one that has the right to vote has been denied the opportunity to cast a vote, and as the Secretary, it is my duty to ensure that remains the case.
As to the specific concerns presented by the Department of Justice, we will be responding next week."
The Justice Departments action has been widely misreported as an order which Florida is now defying, but in fact it was a letter of warning, not a legal injunction.* Florida Secretary of State Detzner wrote a letter of his own in response to the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department on Wednesday
and he did not mince words, accusing DOJ of being the lawbreakers in this affair.* Detzner begins his response by saying his department respectfully disagrees with DOJs position, but his letter is noticeably less respectful by the time it reaches Page Four.
No person has been or will be removed from the voter rolls without the fundamentals of due process, Detzner asserts, citing the relevant Florida statutes in detail.* Biased journalists and assorted hysterics have portrayed Floridas purge as some brutal, abrupt process in which helpless minority voters are ruthlessly disenfranchised, but in fact the 2,600 suspicious voters uncovered by Floridas database search are notified via certified mail with return receipt requested.* They are given 30 days to respond with proof of eligibility, and can request a hearing if desired.
If this notice proves undeliverable (and remember, its certified mail sent to the address listed for a registered voter!) the Department of State publishes a notice in a newspaper of general circulation in the county where the voter was last registered, with an additional 30-day opportunity for the registered voter to resolve the matter.* After all this, if one of those challenged voters feels they were unfairly declared ineligible, they can appeal to state circuit courts, and Florida law provides a clear procedure for restoring their voter registration.
Detzner dismisses the Justice Departments concerns by noting that the State of Florida is not a covered jurisdiction subject to the preclearance requirements of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.* The five Florida counties that are covered are simply administering a law that the Department of Justice has duly precleared.
Furthermore, Detzner asserts Floridas actions are also consistent with the National Voter Registration Act, and notes that the Holder Justice Departments reading of that Act would grant*greater protection against removal from the voter rolls to non-citizens who were never eligible to vote than to other categories of registered voters (such as deceased persons, convicted felons, and the mentally incompetent) who may have lawfully been on the rolls at one time, but have later become ineligible.
This, in Detzners view, would be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution, which guarantees that the right to vote cannot be denied by a dilution of the weight of a citizens vote.* Thats an important point deliberately overlooked by those who denounce every attempt to clean up our ridiculously antiquated and inaccurate electoral system.
Thats about where the respectful part of Detzners letter ends.* Hes still polite and professional, but his next point is sharpened like the tip of a rapier.
Florida has been criticized for conducting its voter verification program within 90 days of an election theres one coming up on August 14.* Even if the National Voter Registration Act is read to absolutely prohibit any attempt to clean out illegal voters within the ninety-day window, the only reason Florida is doing this so close to the election is that the Obama Administration, specifically the Department of Homeland Security, has repeatedly ignored or rebuffed Floridas efforts to gain access to the SAVE database access that was necessary for successful and accurate completion of Floridas efforts to ensure the integrity of its voter registration rolls.* Detzner attached nine months worth of emails to back up this assertion.
This is more than a mere annoyance.* Detzner believes it is a violation of federal law, since DHS is explicitly required to respond to state requests for access to this database for the purpose of verifying voter registration and checking immigration status.
In sum, Detzner concludes, the practice DOJ now appears to be endorsing is as follows: the federal Department of Homeland Security may, for months, violate federal law and deny Florida and other states access to the SAVE database so that the federal Department of Justice may then assert that the resulting delays in a states election-integrity efforts violate the time periods established in another federal law.
This hardly seems like an approach earnestly designed to protect the integrity of elections and to ensure that eligible voters have their votes counted, the Florida Secretary of State puckishly observes.* He then turns the tables on Justice and asks what steps they believe Florida could take to identify and remove non-citizens from its voter registration rolls between todays date and the date of the November 6 general election.* He wonders if DOJ would object to efforts aimed at merely identifying fraudulent voters, even if no action were taken until after the election.
Detzner expects answers to his questions no later than June 11.* Meanwhile, the New York Times offers an update on how the Florida voter integrity procedure has been going:
So far, 13 people in Miami-Dade County, which has the most potential noncitizens on the list, have acknowledged not being citizens. Two of them have voted. More than 1,000 have not responded to the letter, and 500 are citizens.
Whats that, you say?* Thirteen people have actually admitted to being fraudulent voters, and two of them have actually cast votes in the past, just in Miami-Dade County?* A thousand people havent responded to the certified letters at all?* Wow.* Its not exactly a pointless witch hunt, is it?
How about the number of innocent voters brutally disenfranchised by those Department of State stormtroopers?* That would be zero.* We are aware of no U.S. citizens who have been removed from the voter rolls as a result of the states efforts to identify non-citizens, says the departments fact sheet.
The high-profile case of outrage being dragged around to media appearances by vote fraud apologists, World War II veteran Bill Internicola, was never knocked off the rolls.* He received one of those certified letters because he lied about his date of birth on his drivers license.* He was easily able to demonstrate his eligibility to vote by showing his Army discharge papers.* He was mildly inconvenienced, not disenfranchised.
And how big is the problem with illegal voters in Florida?* Nobody knows.* Access to the federal database is necessary to diagnose the problem
and all efforts at diagnosis are denounced as racism or scurrilous efforts to intimidate Democrat voters.
Its long past time someone stood up to the defenders of voter fraud, and took steps to drag our electoral system out of the 1960s.* At the very least, we should be able to discuss the situation rationally.* Let us see if the Justice Department offers some rational answers to the questions asked by Floridas Secretary of State.
