Non-citizen voter database has flaws, local elections officials say

Florida election supervisors, at their annual convention in Tampa this week, find themselves focusing once again on a familiar and troubling issue: the accuracy and reliability of the state voter registration database.

It’s not a problem of their making, and that only adds to their frustration.

As the elections officials convene, they are simultaneously seeking to verify the legal status of about 2,700 voters who were red-flagged by the state motor vehicle agency as non-U.S. citizens and thus ineligible to vote. Problem is, some people on that can legally vote.

One of the people on the list is Manoly Castro-Williamson, 48, of Wesley Chapel, a U.S. citizen and a registered Republican who has voted in every election in Florida since 2004. She was one of 13 potential non-citizen voters forwarded to Pasco County by state elections officials.

Pasco Supervisor of Elections Brian Corley said he finds it troubling that Castro-Williamson, known as a “super voter” for her commitment to casting a ballot, now is being forced to prove her citizenship status just four months after voting in the Republican presidential preference primary.

Corley said she did, by faxing his office a copy of her Ohio birth certificate. But that was after she got an ominous-sounding letter from Corley that said: “You may be in violation of Florida Statutes by being a registered voter in the state of Florida,” and telling her she was entitled to a hearing to challenge an adverse decision.

Read more from Steve Bousquet here.

Sen. Bill Nelson to Fla. TV stations: Don't air U.S. Chamber ad

Laywers for Sen. Bill Nelson have written to Florida TV stations asking them not to air an ad that includes a false claim about Medicare cuts.

From a news release: In the wake of the recent Citizens United case, in which the Supreme Court allowed unlimited and undisclosed corporate money to be spent on such ads, TV stations have a greater responsibility to protect the public from the spread of false and deceptive information, Kendall Coffey, a lawyer for Nelson wrote in a letter to the stations today.

“On behalf of our client, we respectfully insist that you take this inaccurate ad off the air immediately,” Coffey wrote.  “As a media outlet, this station has a duty to protect the public from the spread of false information and deliberate deception.

The U.S. Chamber announced the 30-second ad last week and it repeats a widely used Republican claim that Democrats cut $500 billion from Medicare. It wasn't a cut, according toPolitifact. It was a reduction in future growth (the size of the Medicare program will increase dollar-wise).

The letter is below.

Marching 100 suspended for 2012-13 school year

Florida A&M University’s Marching 100 band will remain suspended for the 2012-13 school year, university President James Ammons announced Monday.

Ammons told the Board of Trustees that the hazing death of drum major Robert Champion “continues to present difficult days for the university family,” and that the band’s continued suspension is part of an effort to eradicate hazing rituals.

The announcement, made six months after the death of Champion, follows news that 101 members of the band were not enrolled at the university, including a few people arrested in connection to Champion’s death aboard a bus in Orlando last November.

Longtime band director Julian White offered his retirement last week.

The band had been suspended indefinitely since Champion’s death. Since then, more reports of hazing within the band and university groups have surfaced.

Voter 'suppression?' Dems might be more threatened by apathy, fear mongering

The congregation repeated every word of the Rev. Jesse Jackson as if he were administering an oath.

“Revive easy access to voting,” Jackson said recently at the 93rd Street Community Baptist Church in Miami. “And stop voter suppression.”

Yup. It’s campaign season.

Cue the talk among liberals that conservatives are trying to rob Democrats of their votes.

This year’s target: A Republican election law, House Bill 1355, which cracks down on voter registration drives and eliminates early voting on the Sunday before Election Day.

A pain? Definitely.

But voter suppression? Not really.

Changing times

This isn’t Bull Connor siccing German shepherds on people. It’s also nothing like Florida’s Jim Crow-era constitutional provision denying former felons the right to vote in a state where more than half the prison population is black.

This is the Republican Party changing election-year rules to keep the voter-registration rolls from quickly growing more Democratic.

“I don’t see it as voter suppression,” said Daniel A Smith, a University of Florida political scientist who is studying the new law’s effects. “This is more an effort to constrain voter participation under the guise of fighting fraud.”

Smith points out that the data clearly show the elections law disproportionately affects black and Hispanic voters.

Meanwhile, partisan lines are forming over the state’s new effort to identify and remove noncitizen voters from the rolls. The state preliminarily identified 180,000 potential noncitizens — many of them black and Hispanic — but the final number of noncitizens on the voter rolls is likely to be much lower.

But there could be a more subtle problem for Democrats and President Barack Obama. It’s not so much “suppression.” It’s more like psychological “repression.”

Quite simply: Democrats have held themselves back from voting.

Consider what happened at Precinct 248, a polling station in the black neighborhood of 93rd Street Community Baptist church.

More here

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Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/13/2797893/voter-apathy-not-floridas-new.html#storylink=cpy