Scott: Fla. to sue DHS in voter purge

Florida Gov. Rick Scott announced on Monday the state will sue the federal government for access to a citizenship status database as part of its effort to purge noncitizens from voter rolls.

The Republican governor told Fox News that the Department of Homeland Security has failed to respond to the state’s request to use the information, and that the Florida secretary of state’s office will now be suing for access to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database.


“We’ve been asking for the Department of Homeland Security’s database, SAVE, for months and they haven’t given it to us. So this afternoon we’ll be filing a lawsuit, the Florida Secretary of State office will be filing a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security to give us that database,” Scott told Fox’s Neil Cavuto. “We want to have fair, honest elections in our state and so we’ve been put in a position that we have to sue the federal government to get this information.”

Scott added that “we have no choice but to file this lawsuit today.”

Last week, Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner wrote a letter to the Justice Department saying the state was not in violation of federal law, but that the Obama administration appeared to be.

“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 stated.

Correction: An earlier headline stated that Florida was suing the Justice Department.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: Andrea Drusch @ 06/11/2012 06:50 PM Correction: An earlier headline stated that Florida was suing the Justice Department.