MIAMI — In an attempt to clear the voter rolls of non citizens, a move that had set off criticism and a threatened lawsuit, Florida election officials decided on Thursday to use information from a federal database to check a list of 182,000 voters who they suspect are not citizens, officials said.

Since last year, the Florida Division of Elections had sought access to the immigration database, which is maintained by the Department of Homeland Security, but the department said there were legal and technical difficulties in sharing the information.

On Thursday, the elections division asked the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, which oversees driver’s licenses and originally compiled the list of 182,000 names, to use its access to the federal database to update its records and cross-check the names.

The state was found to be using a flawed process to pinpoint noncitizens on the voter rolls by relying on an outdated driver’s license database. Some of the people on an initial list of 2,700 possible noncitizens sent to county election supervisors were either naturalized citizens or were born in the United States.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/us/florida-attempts-to-scrub-ille...

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News of 53,000 dead people on voting rolls not news to election officials

One day after news broke that 53,000 deceased voters may still registered to vote, it's important to note that the news is not exactly news for elections officials.

"Our records indicate 55,183 of the people listed on the voter registration rolls are deceased. We have provided detailed information to DOS for their handling," reads a February memo penned by Boyd Walden, a director with the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

The state regularly communicates with local election officials about deceased voters. This new batch of 53,000 came from social security records that were made accessible after a controversial election rewrite passed in 2011.

"We will get weekly files from [the state] electronically," said Duval County Supervisor of Elections Jerry Holland. "It's on an ongoing basis."

He said that Duval County has removed 3,228 deceased voters from the rolls since the beginning of the year. That number includes names from the new social security records.

http://jacksonville.com/opinion/blog/403455/matt-dixon/2012-05-17/n...