ACLU sues Florida to stop noncitizen voter purge
The American Civil Liberties Union sued Florida on Friday to stop its controversial program designed to purge noncitizen voters from the rolls.
The ACLU says the program, which overwhelmingly targets minorities, needs approval from the federal government under the 1965 Voting Rights Act — a claim already made last week by the U.S. Department of Justice when it ordered Florida to cease the purge.
Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner, who is named as a defendant, has said Florida already received permission years ago to clean the voter rolls of noncitizens.
But the ACLU argues that the specific processes for the noncitizen-voter program — a new effort by the state — never received federal approval.
Illegal Immigrants Are Voting in American Elections
Hans A. von SpakovskyAugust 4th 2008
In 2005, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that up to 3 percent of the 30,000 individuals called for jury duty from voter registration rolls over a two-year period in just one U.S. district court were not U.S. citizens. While that may not seem like many, just 3 percent of registered voters would have been more than enough to provide the winning presidential vote margin in Florida in 2000. Indeed, the Census Bureau estimates that there are over a million illegal aliens in Florida, and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has prosecuted more non-citizen voting cases in Florida than in any other state.
Florida is not unique. Thousands of non-citizens are registered to vote in some states, and tens if not hundreds of thousands in total may be present on the voter rolls nationwide. These numbers are significant: Local elections are often decided by only a handful of votes, and even national elections have likely been within the margin of the number of non-citizens illegally registered to vote.
Yet there is no reliable method to determine the number of non-citizens registered or actually voting because most laws to ensure that only citizens vote are ignored, are inadequate, or are systematically undermined by government officials. Those who ignore the implications of non-citizen registration and voting either are willfully blind to the problem or may actually favor this form of illegal voting.
Americans may disagree on many areas of immigration policy, but not on the basic principle that only citizens—and not non-citizens, whether legally present or not—should be able to vote in elections.
THE US Department of Justice is to sue Florida over the state’s controversial plan to remove non-citizens from its voter rolls.The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court in Tallahassee, intensified a legal battle between Barack Obama’s administration and Republican leaders in Florida, a crucial swing state for the presidential election in November.Florida has asked county election officials to remove up to 2600 voters who may be registered illegally. But the federal government’s suit says the state’s list is ”outdated and inaccurate”.
Romney camp aims to win over Hispanics
WASHINGTON - Hispanic advisers to Mitt Romney have told him that it is vital that he soften the sharp rhetoric on immigration that he adopted during the Republican primary race and that he work to make inroads with one of the fastest-growing segments of the electorate.
Several advisers said it is evident that Romney is getting the message, and there are plans underway to make a push among Hispanic voters, who currently support President Obama by more than a 2-to-1 margin. The Romney campaign recently hired a full-time Hispanic outreach coordinator and has held several strategy meetings in Boston with Hispanic leaders.
Obama –Romney electoral vote
polls show president leading,
with key states in play.
As Americans celebrate Memorial Day this weekend, President Obama leads presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney in the all-important electoral college vote count, 247 to 206, according to a widely reported Associated Press report released Saturday. To win the presidency, a candidate must receive at least 270 electoral votes.If these springtime state-by-state polling numbers hold up through Election Day on Nov. 6, the 2012 presidential election would be decided in seven swing states with a total of 85 electoral votes: Florida (29), Ohio (18), Virginia (13), Colorado (9), Iowa (6), Nevada (6) and New Hampshire (4). Obama carried all the aforementioned states in 2008, but an AP assessment of current polls show them all too close to predict at this point.Although the AP article made mention of Obama worries in Wisconsin, it is not clear if Wisconsin is being counted as an Obama state or a Romney state in the AP’s 247-206 tally. The Real Clear Politics (RCP) average for polls conducting between May 9 and May 22 shows Obama with a 47.8 to 45 percent advantage over Romney in Wisconsin, with the most recent poll showing Obama with a 6-point lead. The AP article indicates that if embattled GOP Gov. Scott Walker survives the recall vote in June, Romney may have a better chance to win there in November. Recent polls show voters leaning toward keeping Walker in office.RCP sees the race differently than AP when it comes to assigning states to Obama or Romney – the site’s current count shows Obama with 227 electoral votes likely or leaning his way, while Romney has 161 likely or leaning his way.
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