We interrupt your regularly scheduled Space Friday to bring you this breaking news item from, well, last night.
The Justice Department has officially ordered Florida to cease purging its voter rolls--ostensibly to remove ineligble felons, illegal immigrants, and so forth--in advance of the upcoming election, due to their not having obtained permission from the federal government first. They needed to get permission first because parts of the state are subject to the preclearance clause of the Voting Rights Act, which I detailed in an earlier blog.
Not only did they not bother to ask first, but another law required the purge to have been done by May 16, which they also failed to do.
Both of these, of course, are procedural requirements more than anything else; semantic arguments, not philosophical ones. Luckily, there are lots of those, as well - the DOJ order was prompted by, in addition to the aforementioned, reports that governor Rick Scott was using an outdated driver's license database--incorrectly identifying literally thousands of people as non-citizens--and unfairly targeting Hispanics and Democrats for purging over other groups.
And last but not least, let's not forget that Florida has historically had little to no problems with voter fraud of any kind. What other reason could they possibly have for purging Hispanics from the voter rolls months before the election? I simply can't imagine.
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