Judge Allows Florida Voter Purge To Move Forward Despite Federal Law Forbidding It

[jaxx]

Judge Allows Florida Voter Purge To Move Forward Despite Federal Law Forbidding It
By Ian Millhiser on Jun 27, 2012 at 4:07 pm

Federal Judge Robert Hinkle rejected the Justice Department’s request for a temporary order suspending Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s ® effort to purge tens of thousands of names from his state’s voter roles. According to the AP, Judge Hinkle relied on highly questionable reasoning in order to do so:

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit earlier this month to halt the purge, saying it was going on too close to a federal election. U.S. officials also said the list used by Florida had “critical imperfections, which lead to errors that harm and confuse voters.”

Hinkle in ruling from the bench said federal laws are designed to block states from removing eligible voters close to an election. He said they are not designed to block voters who should have never been allowed to cast ballots in the first place.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/06...idding-it/

This is crazy.

[pappy]

As Think Progress points out the judge is wrong on 2 counts.

First on the law's language and second on basic common sense.

The language is clear:

Quote:A State shall complete, not later than 90 days prior to the date of a primary or general election for Federal office, any program the purpose of which is to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters.

On the common nonsense argument Think Progress says:

Quote:No state should ever purge eligible voters from its voter rolls for reasons that should be obvious. The purpose of the federal law preventing purges of ineligible voters within 90 days of an election is to avoid a situation where a state wrongly flags an eligible voter as someone who cannot lawfully vote without providing that voter enough time to demonstrate that the state made a mistake.

Justice will, without doubt, take this above Hinkle's head. Unfortunately the state will probably force it to SCOTUS where, as we all now, anything can happen (especially if Florida is involved).