The Florida Voter Purges

The Obama campaign is so lackluster right now that its leaders admit the President could lose the election in November even as they're pursuing a blasé strategy to win.  They seem to want to make Obama "not Mitt Romney."  They're only slightly more energetic at combating the efforts by Republican governors and legislatures to restrict voting rights in various states.

When Florida governor Rick Scott moved to purge from the register voters he insisted were non-citizens, his Soviet-style approach to governing was such an affront to Floridians that even local Republican election officials (thirty of them!) refused to comply.  That didn't stop Scott, of course.  Anyway, the U.S. Justice Department  finally took a stand and requested that Scott halt his voter purges, even as it became apparent that actual citizens (including a World War II veteran!) were having their voting eligibility questioned.  That's "requested," not "ordered."  Scott not only refused to comply with the request, he sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to obtain its Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlement (SAVE) database for a more detailed list of non-citizens.

However, DHS says the SAVE list is incomplete and thus may not be comprehensive or even accurate  The SAVE list primarily concerns information regarding naturalized citizens as well as green-card holders and so would not provide enough information to determine who can vote and who cannot, even if Florida could access it.  In the meantime, the Department of Homeland Security prefers to wait until the Justice Department and Scott settle their dispute.  By suing  DHS, Scott doesn't have to worry about what Justice thinks.  Also, he clearly doesn't care what it thinks.

This is the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans.  A Democratic administration has requested that Scott, a Republican governor, cease and desist in his voter purges (please, please, pretty please!) while Scott has sued a federal government department to force the Obama administration to cease and desist asking him to . . . cease and desist.  ("Back off, punks!")  He's going after his own interests in the voter registration issue more aggressively than the Obama administration is going after its own.  Which is why the Democrats will not only lose the 2012 presidential election as well but may not even be around to challenge President Romney in 2016.