With Voting Rights Act Gutted, Florida Set To Resume Voter Purge

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/07/25/2353251/florida-voter-purge-resumes-after-voting-rights-act/

Florida’s controversial initiative to screen for suspected non-citizens and purge them from the voter rolls is allowed to officially resume, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

A Hispanic civil rights group and two naturalized citizens sued last year to block the purge, arguing that it needed to be approved by the federal government because five Florida counties were covered under the Voting Rights Act. After the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out a key section of the law, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit had little choice but to dismiss the suit. Secretary of State Ken Detzner (R) said he plans to resume the voter purge.

In 2012, the Department of Justice warned that Florida’s voter purge, which targeted roughly 180,000 people, was illegal, and all of the state’s county election supervisors refused to execute the purge. The lists of flagged individuals — many of whom had Latino-sounding names — also turned out to be largely inaccurate. These flagged individuals would receive notifications in the mail notifying them that they had 30 days to contest the purge.

The state had to partially settle with a civil rights group and restore suspected non-citizens to the rolls, but soon tried to re-start the purge just a month before the November presidential election with a drastically pared down list of 198 voters.

After all the legal battles and thousands of wasted taxpayer dollars, the state could not turn up virtually any non-citizens who were registered to vote.

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Purgin' and surgin', that's what Gopers are all about, heh?