I was on Thom Hartmann’s Big Picture yesterday to discuss The BRAD BLOG’s special exclusive report on Monday in which counselor Canning and I detailed how Gov. Rick Scott (R) and the state of Florida is attempting to deceive the media, the public, and apparently even the federal court system about this year’s attempted voter purge in the Sunshine State. The Dept. of Justice has filed suit alleging that the systematic removal of voters within 90 days before Florida’s federal primary is a violation of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
As documented in our investigative report, claims being made by Scott, his Sec. of State Ken Detzner and their surrogates in a recent media blitz, charging that the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security was purposely restricting them from access to a federal immigration database in order to keep the state from using it, appear to be baseless. FL had hoped to use the SAVE database to help purge some 182,000 “potential non-citizen” voters they claim are on the rolls.
But FL’s claims (which is used to underscore a dark conspiracy the actions of the federal government are all being done to enhance President Obama’s re-election prospects), are belied by documented email concessions from the FL Dept. of State’s Asst. General Counsel Maria Matthews who acknowledged, as long ago as October of 2011, that the state simply didn’t have the unique numeric identifiers required by DHS to check those “suspected non-citizens” against their immigration and citizenship database.
Here’s my conversation with Hartmann last night about our story…
For more on all of the above, see our original investigative report, including email documentation from public records requests, etc., revealing Florida’s attempted deception. We have now also added a Timeline page for the entire story right here.
PROGRAMMING NOTE: I will be discussing all of the above and more with Congressman Ted Deutch (D-FL-19) on my KPFK/Pacifica Radio show today (Wednesday) at 6p ET/3p PT. You can listen live at http://KPFK.org/listen-live.html.
O.T. but on another front in the war on voters:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/06/iowa-paying-your-debt-society-isnt-quite-enough
Disenfranchisement pays dividends for the <:1%
… er… that should have been the <1% (the “less than one percent”)
And Pam Spaulding over at FDL notes the problem of massive disenfranchisement of the military:
http://pamshouseblend.firedoglake.com/2012/06/27/out-of-2-million-military-and-overseas-voters-in-2010-only-4-6-of-those-votes-counted