Thom Hartmann: The Florida election fix is in for 2012

Right now - this guy - Republican Governor Rick Scott is priming his state for a Mitt Romney victory in November. And he's doing it the same way Republicans have always done it - and that's by kicking Democratic voters off the voting rolls. Last year - Scott told his Secretary of State Ken Browning to begin compiling a list of voters in the state who aren't legal citizens - so they can have their voting rights revoked. Browning did what he asked - and came up with 182,000 Floridians who are possible non-citizens. But Browning himself admitted that the list was rife with errors - and shouldn't be taken public - or depended on to kick voters off the rolls. Governor Scott didn't care though - and after Browning resigned in February - Scott went ahead doing exactly that - and already more than 2,500 voters have been purged. According to documents obtained by the Center for American Progress - of the more than 1,600 Floridians flagged by Scott in Miami-Dade County - over 350 were wrongfully identified - and are actually U.S. citizens who had to provide proof of citizenship to have their voting rights restored. Most of the rest of the 1,600 people flagged in the country haven't responded yet - and many likely never will - even if they are citizens - because they have other things to worry about like getting to work, driving their kids to school, and feeding their family - rather than trying to jump over another hurdle to vote. And that's exactly what the Governor wants - fewer people voting. But not just fewer people voting - fewer Democrats voting \\

A study by the Miami Herald found that Scott's voter purge is targeted at minority and Democratic voters. As the newspaper reports, “Hispanic, Democratic and independent-minded voters are the most likely to be targeted in a state hunt to remove thousands of noncitizens from Florida’s voting rolls...Whites and Republicans are disproportionately the least-likely to face the threat of removal.” Florida is guaranteed to be a battleground state this year - and kicking a few thousand Democrats off the rolls could flip the election in Romney's favor. Heck - it worked in 2000 for George W. Bush - when his brother Jeb denied 7,000 mostly African American Floridians their right to vote in an error-ridden bid to remove tens of thousands of convicted felons from the voting rolls. That was just what the Bush's needed to prevent a sizeable Gore win in Florida - and petition the Supreme Court to appoint Bush as the President of the United States in lieu of Florida actually electing him. As the New York Times reported on November 12th, 2001 after it and a consortium of news organizations conducted their own recount in Florida - Gore actually won the state. The Times wrote: "If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards, and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won."

You would think the revelation that the wrong man is sitting in the White House would be front-page news. Instead - it was buried in the 17th paragraph in a story misleadingly titled, "Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote." The reason why it was buried? Because 9/11 had just happened - and the Times didn't want to diminish Bush's claim to the White House in the middle of a national crisis. So - the stolen election stood. And now here we are again - 12 years later - with Republicans trying to steal Florida for a second time. Governor Rick Scott knows his job - and that's too deliver the Sunshine State for Mitt Romney - just like Jeb Bush did for his brother in 2000. And - as the Miami Herlad reports - he's doing it by blatantly kicking Democrats off the rolls. If eight years of an illegitimate Bush Presidency should have taught us one thing - especially in Florida - it's how precious our votes are - and how drastically the nation could transform if just a few hundred people in one state are denied their voice in our democracy. Let's see to it that it doesn't happen again. If you're in Florida then you need to get out in the streets and get active against this war on voters. Because if you don't - then they'll steal it again.

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