Daniel Tilson: Coming soon: “Deliberative & transparent” 2014 Florida voter purge

With Secretary of State Ken Detzner wrapping up a five-city tour selling a new and improved version of voter purging, it’s worth noting that some citizens still don’t know or believe that the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) engaged in a voter suppression conspiracy leading up to the debacle that was the 2012 election.

That’s not suspicion or rumor. That’s the truth, as revealed and confirmed by Republican officials and consultants who were party to their party’s efforts to interfere with voting rights of citizens they feared would vote Democratic.

The plan, developed by consultants caring little about collateral damage and lots about milking their GOP cash cows, combined voter purges and intimidation tactics with reduced early voting time and new voter registration restrictions.

Republican legislators used their democratically granted powers as public servants to turn that anti-democratic strategy into a law signed by Gov. Rick Scott, then implemented and defended by his appointed Secretary of State, Detzner.

But their poorly laid plan backfired in design, execution and expected result, running afoul of the Department of Justice and flying in the face of the core principles of participatory democracy meant to govern political and government affairs in our nation and state.

Outraged by such bald-faced partisan skullduggery, voters in heavily Democratic-leaning counties and districts rebelled by turning out in massive numbers, waiting on line for hours to re-elect President Obama and wrestle super-majority control of the state House away from the GOP.

Flash forward to 2013.

Facing an uphill battle for 2014 re-election and with Democrats poised statewide to battle for more seats and balance in the Legislature, Scott unveils a new voter-purge plan.

This one primarily targets Florida’s large and growing Hispanic population, over 70 percent of which voted Democratic in 2012. But with its stated goal of getting undocumented immigrants off the voter rolls, Haitian and other Democratic-leaning immigrant communities are also squarely in its sights.

This, even though County Elections Supervisors such as Leon County’s Ion Sancho have said, “We have no evidence that non-citizen voting is a problem.”

It’s worth noting here that the RPOF 2012 voter purge sent scary letters to about 200,000 Floridians claiming they were not eligible to vote. Turns out, only 200 of those people were actually ineligible.

Even in Little League, .001 is not a good batting average.

So now the Scott administration unveils Florida Voter Purge 2.0, a “new” 2014 version of the same old game.

Woohoo?

We’re told that while the 2012 purge used faulty Motor Vehicle records, this version is using superior Department of Homeland Security data.

Who knew, the Department of Homeland Security’s capacities include facilitating partisan state voter suppression campaigns?

In response to reminders there is virtually no non-citizen voting problem warranting further expenditures of taxpayer-funded time and resources, Detzner says:

“I don’t measure things to see if they are a big problem or a small problem. I’m just required by law to do this. The Legislature and the governor told me that non-citizens are ineligible. I have to make sure, to the best of my ability, that they don’t vote.”

Note that Detzner, when questioned in a YouTube interview about mistakes made with the 2012 RPOF voter suppression law, said:

“Well, I don’t really think there were any mistakes made.”

And so last week Detzner unveiled FL Voter Purge 2014, including an incredible “explanatory graphic” about the proposed new process and a five-city tour attempting to sell it to mostly skeptical supervisors of elections and citizens.

Directly contradicting his on-camera statement from earlier this year, Detzer sounded this conciliatory tone last week:

“We learned from the mistakes that we made. We won’t make the same mistakes.”

We shall see.

Carefully read and consider another quote from Detzner last week, mindful of the Republican Party of Florida plan he implemented in 2012 — then decide for yourself about truth and consequences.

“It’s going to start very slowly and it’s going to be deliberative and transparent.”