'The Department of State respectfully disagrees with DOJ’s position,' Florida's secretary of state wrote. | REUTERS Florida defies DOJ on voter purge

Florida’s secretary of state told the Justice Department on Wednesday that the state’s move to purge noncitizens from its voter rolls does not violate the law — and it instead appears the Obama administration is the one breaking federal law.

“It is individuals who are not citizens of the United States,” Florida secretary of state Ken Detzner wrote in a letter late Wednesday to the Justice Dept. “The Florida Department of State has a solemn obligation to ensure the integrity of elections in this state.”


Detzner — who was appointed by Republican Gov. Rick Scott — pushed back against the DOJ’s questioning of the legality of Florida’s purge. In a letter last week, the DOJ said the state violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by not notifying the federal government of the move to purge its voter rolls. The DOJ also stated Florida was not in compliance with the National Voter Registration Act, which says states can’t remove voters from rolls less than 90 days before a federal election.

“The Department of State respectfully disagrees with DOJ’s position. The actions taken by Florida to identify and remove non-citizens from its voter rolls ensure that the right to vote of citizens is protected and is not diluted by the votes of ineligible persons,” Detzner wrote.

Detzner also accused the Dept. of Homeland Security of not giving Florida access to a federal database with citizenship information.

“By denying Florida access to the SAVE database, DHS appears to have violated federal law, which provides that states may use the SAVE database ‘for any legal purpose such as … voter registration,’” the letter states.

And, Detzner added, DHS is required to respond to any state’s request to check the citizenship or immigration status of any individual.

“The federal Department of Homeland Security may, for months, violate federal law and deny Florida and other states access to the SAVE database so that the federal Department of Justice may then assert that the resulting delays in a state’s election-integrity efforts violate the time periods established in another federal law,” he wrote. “This hardly seems like an approach earnestly designed to protect the integrity of elections and to ensure that eligible voters have their votes counted.”