Citizenship Arbitrator declares 'Debate is Over' in Florida

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Tuesday June 12, 2012 · 7:40 PM PDT

2012/06/12 · 19:40

Fabricating a 50% "success rate" -- Governor Rick Scott has declared the Voter Purge Debate -- is dead.

By some sort of GOP self-righteous fiat it seems ...

Gov. Rick Scott: 'Debate is over;' 50 non U.S. citizens voted in elections

Soledad O’Brien, CNN Politics -- June 12, 2012

Gov. Scott says, "[...] we tried to use our own database to do it. And we know that even with that database we found 100 people that are not entitled to vote. They’re non US citizens. And we know 50 of them voted.”
He adds, “This is not a partisan issue. This is not Republican or Democrat or independent issue. [...]

Rick Scott conveniently fails to disclose how big of a dragnet he cast, to find those 50 illegal voters ... How many more legal voters will be prevented from voting due to his wide-net fish-expedition.

Any guesses on the collateral damage Rick Scott's dragnet will leave in its wake ... and in which ethnic and demographic ponds, those un-tallied causalities will eventually turn up in?

100 invalid registrations found, and 50 of those supposedly voted before.

A 100 out of how many challenged? Here are the stats for just one Florida County:

Rick Scott on purge: We found 50 non-citizen voters so ‘debate is over’

by David Edwards, rawstory.com -- June 12, 2012

[...]
“Critics say this is discriminatory,” Romans noted. “And one big political move to eliminate potential Democratic voters.”
“Absolutely not,” Scott replied. “This is nonpartisan.”

Records obtained by the liberal website Think Progress showed that the “list compiled by the Scott administration is so riddled with errors that, in Miami-Dade County alone, hundreds of U.S. citizens are being told they are ineligible to vote.”

According to the records, 359 of the 1,638 alleged “non-citizen” voters on the Miami-Dade list were able to provide proof of citizenship. The county identified another 26 as U.S. citizens. Most of the remaining 1,200 people targeted by the purge in that area had not yet responded to the letter sent by the Supervisor of Elections.
[...]

Here's is what that statewide dragnet looks like, all to catch those 50 small-fry fish ... and so Scott can put on an indignant face for the fawning reporters ...

EXCLUSIVE: Florida Telling Hundreds Of Eligible Citizens That They Are Ineligible To Vote

By Judd Legum, thinkprogress.org -- May 27, 2012

[...]
In short, an excess of 20 percent of the voters flagged as “non-citizens” in Miami-Dade are, in fact, citizens. And the actual number may be much higher.
An analysis of the state-wide list by the Miami Herald found that “Hispanic, Democratic and independent-minded voters are the most likely to be targeted” as ineligible by the list. Conversely, “whites and Republicans are disproportionately the least-likely to face the threat of removal.”

Late last year, Scott ordered his Secretary of State, Kurt Browning, to “to identify and remove non-U.S. citizens from the voter rolls.” Browning could not access to reliable citizenship data. So election officials attempted to identify non-U.S. citizens by comparing data from the state motor vehicle administration with the voting file. That process produced a massive list of 182,000 names, which Browning considered unreliable and refused to release. Browning resigned in February and Scott pressed forward with the purge.
[...]

Kind of makes you wonder why Browning quit, given his backstory? Perhaps he could read the disproportionate handwriting on Rick Scott's Disenfranchisement Wall?

Declaring a Debate over -- really shouldn't make it so.

There is usually much more to the story when it comes to GOP Governors defiantly wearing that Tea Party Label.

Just ask the DOJ ... now ordering Scott to cease and desist. Not over by a long shot.

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Citizenship Arbitrator declares 'Debate is Over' in Florida

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