As if I weren’t already embarrassed about having been born and raised in Florida, the state continues to make things worse.
For example, four years after the multifaceted election debacle, the Sunshine State continues to purge the voter rolls of eligible Floridians.
For the second straight presidential election, Florida’s law against former felons voting, a law grounded in Old South racism, may prevent thousands of people from voting.
Some of those people may be legally entitled to vote. Others won’t be able to navigate the bureaucratic hurdles of the state’s clemency process to get their rights restored in time for the election.
But the state government is concentrating on removing as many former felons from voting rolls as possible, even though critics charge that it risks disenfranchising some who are legally entitled to vote. Meanwhile, those critics charge, the state is dragging its feet on restoring those wrongly removed from voter rolls in 2000.
Florida is one of only seven states with laws that prevent former felons from voting unless they go through a long and sometimes difficult process of having their rights restored.
That law, which wasn’t enforced by the state before the controversial 2000 presidential race, caused hundreds or possibly thousands of voters – no one knows for sure – to be turned away from the polls in 2000, some wrongly, because of errors in a state “purge list” of former felons.
Hmm. Polls show another close election coming up, Florida is the nation’s largest swing state (27 electoral votes), the president’s brother is the state’s governor, and state officials are moving with incredible efficiency to scrub voter rolls of tens of thousands of voters who are probably be eligible to vote, even though county supervisors don’t have the staff or resources to keep up with the state’s demands.
Oh, and did I mention that the vast majority of the effected voters are African American and likely Democrats? I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.
It’s so bad in Florida that the head of Florida’s elections division resigned this week, apparently because he was sick of being pressured to purge more voters from the state system.
Ed Kast, who has worked for the state elections division for more than a decade, said only that he was resigning to “pursue other opportunities.”
Yeah, him and George Tenet.
But Kast has told a handful of associates that he was uncomfortable with growing pressure to trim felons from voter rolls in time for the fall election, friends say.
“I’ve known him for 20 years, and I believe he has acted because under the circumstances it’s the only thing he could do,” said Leon County Election Supervisor Ion Sancho, past president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections.
“Ed had made a number of comments that the nature and timing of this felons list was not something he was responsible for. I think he felt in good conscience he could no longer be involved in the operations.”
I can’t say I blame him, but Kast’s departure means Jeb Bush’s administration gets to replace Kast with a state elections supervisor of the governor’s choosing.
Sigh.