Read ThinkProgress reporting here.
Watch the coverage of Florida’s voter purge here at MSNBC.com.
Washington, D.C. — ThinkProgress reporting on Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s push to deny thousands of eligible American citizens their right to vote, including decorated WWII veteran Bill Internicola and small-business owner of 40 years Maureen Russo, was featured on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show along with a Miami Herald analysis that found the purge—at 2,700 voters and counting—to consist mainly of independent-minded, Latino, and Democratic-leaning voters. Despite the fact that this same impartial analysis found a disproportionate number of nonwhite voters on the list to be turned away from the polls in November, as compared with the totality of Florida’s active voter rolls, a spokesman for Florida’s Division of Elections vowed “there will be more names.”
This severely flawed list, naming thousands of Florida voters to be barred from casting their ballot, was pared down from an original list of over 180,000 purported noncitizens and resulted in several individuals—U.S. citizens for their entire lives—receiving notice that in order to continue to exercise their right to vote, they must prove their eligibility in court. State election officials have acknowledged that, as a result of Scott’s voter purge, eligible voters will be removed from the rolls. “It will happen,” Mary Cooney, a spokeswoman for the Broward County Supervisor of Elections, told ThinkProgress.
Related coverage of Florida Governor Rick Scott’s Voter Purge by Judd Legum:
To speak with Judd Legum, Editor-In Chief of ThinkProgress, please contact Christina DiPasquale at 202.481.8181 or [email protected].
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