As anticipated, Florida Governor Rick Scott has responded to last week's call by the Justice Department to stop its crackdown on non-citizens from the voting rolls, and not surprisingly, he's not abiding by their request.
"The Department of State respectfully disagrees with DOJ's position," Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner wrote in the state's first official response. "The actions taken by Florida to identify and remove non-citizens from its voter rolls ensures that the right to vote of citizens is protected and is not diluted by the vote of ineligible persons."
However that doesn't mean that the state's supervisor of elections will immediately proceed with the controversial measure. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports that Ron Labasky, attorney for the Florida Association of Supervisors of Elections, said that the SOE's won't continue with the voter purge until the dispute with the federal government is resolved.
This article appears in Jun 7-13, 2012.