As the state readies to launch a new effort to scrub suspected noncitizens from the voter rolls, one key question remains: How many county supervisors of elections will join the effort after they essentially torpedoed a similar purge last year?
Speaking to the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee on Monday, Secretary of State Ken Detzner said the process this time would be helped along because it uses the Department of Homeland Security's Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database.
SAVE is comprised of data from several federal agencies including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Coast Guard, and state officials say it will be more reliable than last year's attempt based largely on data from driver's licenses.
"SAVE has really been a game-changer when it comes to list maintenance," Detzner said.
The secretary also assured lawmakers that the state Division of Elections will proceed deliberately as it seeks to weed out those who are registered to vote but are not eligible to do so.
"This will be a case-by-case management process," he said. "We will not start until we are ready."
The state, though, is in a delicate position. While it can identify individuals it thinks should be removed from the rolls and call those names to the attention of local supervisors, state officials are not empowered to purge voters. Only county supervisors -- many of whom helped scuttle last year's effort -- can remove voters.
"As the secretary of state, I have the duty to provide documented, credible and reliable information to our county supervisors of elections, so that they may undertake their statutory responsibility to update their voter rolls," Detzner said.
Detzner and Maria Matthews, director of the Division of Elections, dodged questions about whether any supervisors had already agreed to participate. Instead, they stressed that none of the supervisors has so far refused to take part in the effort.
"We would envision that all 67 would elect to be a part of the SAVE verification agreement. ... But at this juncture, I don't know why, personally, any county would not wish to participate as part of that," Matthews said.
But skepticism remains among Democrats, who blasted last year's purge as an effort to boost Republican election prospects and have been almost as hostile to this year's project. Sen. Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth, pressed Detzner and Matthews for the number of supervisors who have said they would participate.
After the meeting, Clemens said he believes none of the supervisors have done so. And he said whether supervisors participate will likely rely on how fair the state purge appears to be.
"If it seems to be politically motivated, if say all of the people that are being purged happen to be Democrats or minorities, I think that there's going to be a big problem," he said.
Clemens also said that he wondered how much the new program would accomplish, given that specific information is needed to query the SAVE database.
"I think in the end, they're going to be spending a heck of a lot of time to remove very few people from the voter rolls," he said. "I think our resources could be better spent trying to register people to vote, as opposed to trying to get a few people off the voting rolls."
