Don Gaetz Backs Rick Scott Removing Non-Citizen Voters

Senate President-designate Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, supported the efforts to clean non-U.S. citizens from the voter rolls and criticized South Florida voting, while on the radio Tuesday morning.

With four civil rights groups posed today in Washington to announce a third lawsuit against Floridas registered voter review, Gaetz said Gov. Rick Scott is doing the right thing to make sure everyone who is qualified can vote, while on the Fort Walton radio station WFTW 1260 AM.

When you get down into South Florida, into Broward County and Palm Beach County, Gaetz responded to a caller while talking to morning talk show host Ken Walsh and a mostly Panhandle audience, there are voter challenges by the 100s, and by the 1,000s sometimes, not knowing whether people are voting the in the right place, whether theyre qualified to vote, whether theyve already voted. These are issues that have come up every time we have a vote.

Four voting and civil rights groups -- Fair Elections Legal Network, Project Vote, LatinoJustice PRLDEF and the Advancement Project -- released a statement Monday that they will hold a media conference in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday to announce the lawsuit.

The ACLU of Florida has already filed a lawsuit in federal court in Tampa on behalf of two of the 2,600 names sent by the state to county supervisors to check -- Murat Limage, a Haitian-American U.S. citizen, and Pamela Gomez, a Dominican-American Hispanic U.S. citizen.

The U.S. Department of Justice has also taken Florida to court, reiterating its demand for the state to immediately cease the ongoing review of voters. The review violates federal law, being undertaken within 90 days of an election, according to the DOJ.

Meanwhile, Florida has taken the Obama administration to court to gain access to the Homeland Security database the governors office has requested since September. The state claims it has tried in vain to get DHS's help in finding non-citizens among Floridas registered voters.

Gaetz did not respond when Walsh criticized Scott for failing to back attorney Larry Klayman, who was in Leon County Court Monday with a lawsuit disputing President Barack Obama's eligibility to serve.

Klayman contends he has evidence Obama wasn't born in the U.S., therefore ineligible to serve as president and shouldn't be on the fall ballot in Florida.