The state government is adding a new system for cross-checking voter rolls, and Alachua County is moving toward implementing it.
Ken Detzner, a Republican and Florida’s Secretary of State, recently completed his five-city tour around Florida, aiming to educate about an improved plan to bar noncitizens from state voter rolls, which are lists of registered voters in an area.
Formerly, Florida used the driver’s license database from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles to determine whether someone was a citizen and therefore eligible to vote.
This database only changes when someone makes a transaction directly with the department, which could be once every four years for license renewal, said Pam Carpenter, the Alachua County Supervisor of Elections.
Last year, the DMV database excluded war veterans in the rolls, The New York Times reported.
Florida will also be using the SAVE Program administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to compare databases and determine if someone is eligible to vote, Carpenter said.
SAVE, short for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, was created to ensure immigrants were receiving their entitled benefits. Now, it will also prevent them from voting illegally.
Carpenter said she sees how the change is an improvement but said she knows it isn’t foolproof.
“The question is that how quickly is that information going to be up there, and how is that going to affect new citizens,” she said. “We want to make sure the list that we get from the state or the documentation we get from the state is credible and reliable.”
UF political science professor Richard Scher said he doesn’t agree with keeping noncitizens from voter rolls.
“In the long history of this country, noncitizens could vote. That all changed in the 1920s,” he said.
He said that today some U.S. cities, including Chicago, allow noncitizens to vote in local elections.
Carpenter said the new process is about respecting existing federal laws.
“The bottom line is you need to be a U.S. citizen,” she said. “So it’s important that we continue to do file updates and keep them clean.”
A version of this story ran on page 9 on 10/22/2013 under the headline "Florida to examine voter rolls more closely"
