Counting The Rolls

Florida is a crucial state in Presidential elections. What could go wrong this year?

Florida officially renewed its hunt for ineligible voters on Wednesday, sending a new list of 198 people suspected of being non-U.S. citizens to county election officials and asking them to start the process to remove them from the rolls.

This new list is a far cry from the more than 2,600 registered voters that state election officials once targeted -- but Republican Gov. Rick Scott and others have defended the continued effort.

"I have not talked to one Floridian who says I want my vote diluted by somebody who has never had a right to vote in my state," Scott said last week. "We are doing absolutely the right thing. We believe in honest and fair elections."

It's not clear, however, if the latest effort by the state will result in voters being removed from the rolls prior to this year's presidential election. Florida is a key swing state, and voting rights groups have criticized the purge as a way of discouraging legal immigrants and minorities from casting ballots.

Under the process that election supervisors will use, they will send out letters to those suspected of being non-citizens. In some cases it could take up to 60 days before the voters are eventually removed from the rolls.

You'd think, in a state like Florida, they'd have enough dead voters without having to rely on fake ones...