Judge: Florida voter purge is legal

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected a Justice Department request to block Florida’s voter purge.

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle ruled that that the state’s effort to remove potentially ineligible voters from its rolls is legal despite the looming Aug. 14 election, The Associated Press reports.


The Justice Department sued the state earlier this month over Gov. Rick Scott’s effort to identify and remove non-citizens from the rolls, arguing that the effort comes too close to the election and uses too imperfect a database to guarantee voters’ rights.

In a statement on his website, Scott said, “The court made a common-sense decision consistent with what I’ve been saying all along: that irreparable harm will result if non-citizens are allowed to vote.”

A Justice Department said in a statement to POLITICO, “We will review the written decision when it’s issued, and we decline further comment at this time.”

The state has asked local election officials to investigate the citizenship status of some 2,600 voters, but has yet to distribute a list of 182,000 voters — and won’t do so, according to a Scott spokesperson, unless the state can check the names against a Department of Homeland Security database. The state is suing for access to the database.

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