Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner announced Thursday that he plans to suspend the Department of State’s “Project Integrity” initiative until at least 2015.
Last fall, Detzner rolled out the second phase of “Project Integrity” which aimed to purge registered voters from the voting rolls.
In a letter to Supervisors of Elections, dated March 27, 2014, Detzner goes into a lengthy explanation of the importance of having accurate voter rolls and efforts undertaken through various phases of the program, to bring this about.
“Project Integrity” relies on data from the Federal SAVE Program, an electronic program that verifies whether or not a person has the immigration status through documentation provided.
Detzner states, because the second phase of the Federal SAVE Program will not be completed before 2015, he has decided to postpone implementing “Project Integrity” until this has been done.
League of Women Voters of Florida President Deirdre Macnab, applauded the shelving of “Project Integrity,” saying in a statement:
Florida voters should be delighted by this news. Independently elected Supervisors of Elections are already standing sentry on making sure that only eligible citizens are voting. Programs like “Project Integrity” have proven time and time again to disproportionally impact minority voters and erroneously disenfranchise those that are eligible.
Florida’s attempts to purge voters from the voting roll in the past have proven to be an embarrassment.
Gov. Rick Scott has vowed to clean up the voting rolls and prior to the 2012 election launched a voter purge. As it turned out, over 182,000 registered voters were wrongly targeted by the state.
