Illegal Immigrants Found on Florida's Voting Rolls

Florida may remove as many as 2,600 (and counting) illegal immigrants from their voter rolls. It’s a slightly different situation here than what’s being fought by the U.S. Justice Department, who is trying to fight a bill being pushed by the GOP to require state issued ID’s in order to vote. GOP legislators said they pushed some of the changes in order to crack down on potential voter fraud.

Somehow, here in Florida, illegal immigrants are legally obtaining drivers licenses. The Division of Elections spokesman Chris Cate said:

“We're not talking about illegal immigrants who are getting on to the voter rolls. In this case, we're talking about people who have legally gone through the process with Highway Safety to obtain a driver's license, which is absolutely okay for a non-citizen to do, but they can't register to vote”.

I’m not sure if he’s referring to DMV employees handing out licenses to illegal’s against the current state’s laws, as we’ve seen in the past, or if Florida has a policy of allowing illegal immigrants to obtain a license. Either way, it’s ridiculous. Florida law requires voters to be a US citizen residing in the state.

The Duval County Supervisor of Elections, Jerry Holland, said they’ve seen indications where people who’re ineligible to vote but have voted, have been on the voting rolls for at least eight years. A spokesperson for the Department of State said a list was handed out of people with driver’s licenses that appear to be illegal aliens. If these voters are confirmed as illegals, their names will be dropped off the voter rolls. One person from Hillsborough County registered to vote in 1959.

The probing into whom is eligible to vote has been a daunting task for Florida in the past. In 2004, an attempt to remove felons from voter rolls was stopped after some saw that the state's list had problems. The database is supposed to check the names of registered voters against other databases; including people who've died, sent to prison, etc.

A spokesperson for the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles said that prior to last year there has been no safety-net checking if registered voters had a driver's license, let alone citizenship. Legally-visiting non-citizens are allowed to obtain a driver's license, however those who've entered here illegally or whom have allowed their visa's to expire, are not.

Almost four years ago, Barack Obama took the state of Florida with over 200,000 votes, and won 28 of 50 states (57 states, if you're an Obama '08 voter). How many other states have similar issues? As most of you who follow politics remember, the 2000 election was decided by 537 votes. This list from Florida is only a portion of a list that contains as many as 140,000 names, if not more. The investigation is still ongoing.

There needs to be a requirement for voters to have an updated ID, as the GOP suggests, but we also need to make sure we aren't handing out ID's or driver's licenses as quick and blindly as this administration hands out food stamps.