Friday, June 08, 2012

My Vote My Power

Following up from the last post about Rick Scott and his underlings breaking voter rights' laws, the papers are saying the voter purge is all but over because the county elections supervisors - the ones who have to do the heavy lifting - are united in saying the lists are flawed and illegal:

The 67 county elections supervisors — who have final say over voter purges — are not moving forward with the purge for now because nearly all of them don't trust the accuracy of a list of nearly 2,700 potential noncitizens identified by the state's elections office.
"We're just not going to do this," said Leon County's election supervisor, Ion Sancho, one of the most outspoken of his peers. "I've talked to many of the other supervisors and they agree. The list is bad. And this is illegal."
So far, more than 500 have been identified as citizens and lawful voters on the voter rolls. About 40 people statewide have been identified as noncitizens. At least four might have voted and could be guilty of a third-degree felony.
The eligibility of about 2,000 have not been identified one way or the other..

Just take a look at the numbers: so far 500 that were kicked off the polls didn't deserve to be kicked.  Only 40 were identified as non-citizens.  At least four (!) out of the 2,700 on the original list may have broken the law.

Only 4 possible violators.  Compared to 500 citizens who didn't break the law who still suffered.  And compared to the 11 MILLION registered voters out of 18 MILLION state residents.

If Rick Scott and his buddies think they are fighting some massive criminal conspiracy... THEY ARE CLEARLY NOT.  Four out of 18 Million is... do the math people... my Windows calculator says 2.2222E-007, thanks Rick Scott you BROKE MY CALCULATOR TOO.  (seriously, it's less than a percentage of a percentage of 1 percent!)  This is not worth denying the honest-to-God rights of 500 honest citizens (and even more if those 2000 voters ever check their mailboxes).  If this is crime-fighting, it's akin to stopping drunk drivers by blowing up all the roads!

And despite the optimism of the Tampa Bay Times reporting, I guarantee you Rick Scott and his Sec. of State Ken Detzner are going to figure out a way to press on with their purge.  They have an ideological belief that "voter fraud" is real (it's not: most evidence points to such fraud as basic record errors!  And it's miniscule: less than a percent of a percent of a percent for God's sake!), and that belief cannot be stopped or denied.  They've already tried flipping the argument about by accusing the Dept. of Justice of failing to help them access federal databases - especially Homeland Security's illegal immigrant databases - they need to use to push their purge further.  This is even though the original Sec. of State Browning discovered the purge list is hugely flawed and resigned rather than implement it.  This is even with Attorney General Holder stating publicly that Scott is breaking the law by pushing this voter purge.

Scott and Detzner and the Republican Party as a whole will keep pushing this non-scandal until and unless the handcuffs are clapped on their wrists and they get dragged off for violating voters' rights under both state (Florida Statutes 104, specifically 104.0515 and 104.0616) and federal laws (1965 Voting Rights Act and 2003 Voter Registration Act).

Those 500 Florida residents who got booted off the rolls and had to press to get their rights back - rights that SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN TAKEN IN THE FIRST PLACE - have a legitimate legal grievance against Rick Scott.  Charge him.  Even just one of you has a case against this bastard.  Protect your rights, people.  MY VOTE is MY POWER.  It's yours too.

Now Available


UPDATE: I realize that trying to figure out the numbers - 4 divided by 18 million - for determining the percentage of people committing actual voter fraud is a bit tricky since every calculator I've tried using can't reduce the decimal count that low.  So I decided on the opposite route: figure out the percentages of people who are honestly voting out of the 11 million registered in Florida.  So basically 11 million minus 4 is 10,999,996 honest voters.  Now THAT I can divide by the total voter count of 11,000,000 and that gives me .99999963 roughly speaking.  Converting that to percentage and that is 99.999963 percent of honest voters out there.  Meaning the amount of fraud is .000037 percent, give or take.  It's nowhere near even a percent of 1 percent (which would be .001 percent).  Basically, it means actual voter fraud is close to ZERO when compared to honest voting.  So why the obsession with voter fraud?  There are ten thousand more serious crimes taking place in Florida and/or the nation on any given day: why voter fraud, when there's practically NO FRAUD taking place?

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