The Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice has issued a 5 page response to the Florida Secretary of State.  The DOJ letter focuses on the 90 day “quiet period” in the National Voter Registration Act that prohibits systemic purges and reminds Florida that the Homeland Security database only includes naturalized citizens and not those born in the U.S. and Florida had been on notice for at least eight months that it needed to provide additional detail to use the SAVE database.  The letters ends with “I have authorized the initiation of an enforcement action against Florida in federal court.”

Meanwhile, the Florida Secretary of State announced that the state had filed suit in the  U.S District Court for the Distrait of Columbia.  The suit claims that the Department of State has a statutory right of access to the SAVE (Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements Program System of Records) database and the Homeland Security department is preventing access.  The e-mails attached to the complaint outline some of the State’s plans for the data – including running a search on all of Florida’s almost 12 million voters (at a cost of at least 50 cents per voter) and then continually running checks on new applicants.  (Documents courtesy of the Miami Herald website.)

Courtesy of the Miami Herald, a federal lawsuit has been filed against the State challenging the voter purge that the DOJ and the Secretary of State have been exchanging letters over.

You can probably guess the tone of this letter by reading its title: “Florida’s Continuing Commitment to Protecting Citizen Voting Rights.”  The Florida Secretary of State disputes the DOJ’s analysis of the National Voter Registration Act and Voting Rights Act, asserts the Homeland Security Dept. is violating federal law, and challenges the DOJ to answer a list of questions.  Coverage from the Miami Herald (thanks for the letter copy) and the Tampa Bay Times.

Calling the portion of the new law “harsh and impractical,” a Federal Judge has granted a motion for a preliminary injunction concerning the part of Florida’s HB1355 that required third party group to turn in voter registration applications within 48 hours.  (Order courtesy of the Palm Beach Post.)

“Under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, an election-code provision of this kind must serve a legitimate purpose that is sufficient to warrant the burden it imposes on the right to vote.  And under the National Voting Rights Act, an organization has a federal right to conduct a voter-registration drive, collect voter-registration applications, and mail in the applications to a state voter-registration office. The Eleventh Circuit so held in Charles H. Wesley Education Foundation, Inc. v. Coxx, 408 F.3d 1349 (11th Cir. 2005). But § 97.0575 and Rule 1S-2.042 severely restrict an organization’s ability to do this.  The statute and rule impose a harsh and impractical 48-hour deadline for an organization to deliver applications to a voter registration office and effectively prohibit an organization from mailing applications in. And the statute and rule impose burdensome record-keeping and reporting requirements that serve little if any purpose, thus rendering them unconstitutional even to the extent they do not violate the NVRA. The statute and rule include other provisions that are constitutional and do not conflict with the NVRA; a primary injunction barring enforcement of those provisions is denied.”

Very interesting report developed by Dr. Susan MacManus, an expert in Florida politics who teaches at the Univeristy of South Florida, detailing the demographics and distribution of Florida’s registered voters.