A Florida Democrat has a message for his GOP governor: Stop trying to suppress voter turnout to help your party.
Gov. Rick Scott has come up with a list of 180,000 voters who his administration suspects are ineligible to cast ballots in the battleground state. The problem? Florida has cast such a wide net that it seems to have snared many legitimate voters.
A Miami Herald analysis shows that Hispanics, Democrats, and independent minded voters are most likely to be targeted by Scott's initiative — potentially hurting President Obama and other Democrats in November.
That's outraging Democratic Congressman Ted Deutch. "He's got to stop this," the lawmaker said of the governor on The Ed Show on Thursday.
"The whole plan is to suppress voter turnout, whether by scrubbing the roles or whether by convincing people it’s just too difficult. That’s what we have to remind them. They can’t give up,” he added, noting that several of his constituents received letters saying they were ineligible to vote — even though they are American citizens.
The strategy of zapping voters from the rolls isn't exactly revolutionary. As the Herald notes, "Florida went looking for potential noncitizen voters, following the lead of Republican secretaries of state in Colorado and New Mexico — two other Hispanic-heavy swing states this election year."
Something similar happened in the run-up to the chaotic 2000 presidential election in Florida, when it was discovered that thousands of black voters were wrongly prevented from casting ballots because they had names similar to convicted felons. George W. Bush won the state by 537 votes.
An NBC-Marist poll released Thursday showed President Obama leading presumed Republican nominee Mitt Romney 48% to 44%.