Florida voter purge yields criminal probe into 2 noncitizen voters

Two Miami-Dade men caught up in a controversial voter-purge could face criminal charges for possibly casting unlawful ballots in Florida elections, The Miami Herald has learned.

The cases of Neville M. Walters and Ramon Cue add a new layer of political complexity to Florida’s contentious noncitizen voter purge, a focal point in the national debate over fraud and fairness in this year’s presidential election.

On Friday, county elections supervisors showed so little faith in the state-led purge that their state association said they shouldn’t cooperate. The announcement came just hours after the U.S. Justice Department ordered Florida to stop its effort due to two federal voting-rights laws, partly because the purge could disproportionately affect minorities.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott wouldn’t rule out fighting the Justice Department in court. “We want fair elections,” Scott said. “We want people who have the right to vote go out there and vote.”

The cases of Cue and Neville could strengthen his administration’s hand because they suggest there’s a good chance more ineligible voters are on the rolls and could cast ballots unlawfully if they’re not stopped.

They were among 13 registered voters who acknowledged they weren’t U.S. citizens, Miami-Dade’s election supervisor says. Since elections records show each voted — Cue once in 1996 and Walters seven times since 2000 — the office forwarded the men’s names to the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office. The two could face third-degree felony charges.

“We are investigating the allegations,” said Ed Griffith, Miami-Dade state attorney’s office spokesman. “First, we need to make sure the data is accurate.”

No easy task. Any large-scale effort to clean voter rolls is beset with false positives and errors due to misspellings and inaccurate addresses in a database of more than 11 million active voters, plus nearly 1 million more classified as inactive voters.

Full story here

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/01/2827629/gov-rick-scott-florida-is-absolutely.html#storylink=cpy

Judge orders Zimmerman back to jail for misleading court

George Zimmerman was ordered back to jail on Friday for misleading the court at his bond hearing about his finances.

Seminole County Circuit Court Judge Kenneth Lester revoked the bail for Zimmerman — who is facing a second-degree murder charge in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin of Miami Gardens — after finding that Zimmerman and his wife concealed their access to a $200,000 account during a bail hearing in April.

Zimmerman, who was not present at Friday’s hearing, now must surrender to Seminole County sheriff’s deputies by Sunday afternoon.

Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, is accused of chasing down Trayvon in his gated community in Sanford and then shooting him after a scuffle on Feb. 26. Prosecutors argue that Zimmerman went after Trayvon, who was walking to his father’s apartment, because he wrongly assumed the teen was about to commit a crime. Zimmerman told police he acted in self-defense, after Trayvon attacked him and slammed his head on the sidewalk. More here.

Poll: Rep. Jose Felix Diaz narrowly leads Rep. Ana Rivas Logan in Miami battle of GOP incumbents

State Rep. Jose Felix Diaz holds a narrow lead over fellow state Rep. Ana Rivas Logan, with most voters still undecided, according to a new poll on the race between the two Miami Republicans who find themselves battling over the same seat after once-a-decade redistricting.

If the election were held today, 31 percent of respondents said they would vote for Diaz and 24.7 percent for Logan, with 44.3 percent undecided, according to the survey conducted by Miami pollster Dario Moreno. The margin of error for the poll of 300 likely Republican voters is 4.5 percent.

Moreno said he polled the race on behalf of a business group that asked to remain unnamed but authorized Moreno to release the poll results. Neither he nor the business group is working for either of the candidates, he said. Logan questioned the poll's results.

The race between Logan and Diaz, pitting two GOP incumbents against each other, is one of the most closely watched in Miami-Dade. An anonymous campaign flier attacked Logan as early as January -- eight months before the August election and weeks before the new House legislative district boundaries confirmed that the two sophomore state representatives would be in the same seat.

Jeb Bush: Mitt Romney should pick Marco Rubio as VP

WASHINGTON -- If there were any doubts that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has no intention of returning to a ballot anytime soon, he laid them to rest Friday, in a rare appearance at a congressional hearing.

The Republican former governor was invited to speak to the House Budget Committee by the committee's chairman, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., author of a federal budget despised by Democrats in part for its proposed changes to the Medicare program for seniors. Bush's remarks focused on removing barriers to free enterprise, but throughout the hearing, he was free with his opinions on all sorts of other policy matters.

"This will prove I'm not running for anything," Bush said, when talking about how he could support a bipartisan commission to examine the tax code for loopholes. He also noted that he thought immigration reform could be a strategy for sustained economic growth -- a position that he said puts him "a little out of step with my own party."

Bush's candor made it clear that he sees his place as a senior Republican whose opinions carry a lot of weight in his party, but whose private sector life gives him a measure of independence. In Washington, that ability to speak freely makes him a refreshing figure. He was followed out of the hearing to his taxi by a throng of reporters so deep that, in the crush,  one camerawoman tumbled backward in the hallway of the Cannon Office Building.

No, Bush told the scrum, he's not interested in being vice president. "I'm going to support Gov. Romney, he's a great guy," Bush said. "I believe he has an excellent chance of being elected. I'm going to do what I can to (help him) be elected."

But from the window of his taxi, Bush said he does think highly of his friend Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., for the job.

"That would be my choice, but I’m not Mitt Romney," Bush said. "Marco would bring an incredible energy, he’s the most articulate spokesman for conservative principles I think in America today, and he’s my friend. So I’m a little biased. But I think he would be extraordinary."

Bush also said he likes Rubio's immigration proposal, a Republican alternative to the DREAM Act. He said that Republicans need to work on attracting Hispanic voters by highlighting their economic policies over those of Democrats.

Bush hasn't testified in front of a congressional hearing since he talked about disaster preparations during the brutal 2005-2006 hurricane season -- and it's a good guess that he won't return any time soon. "This is a gotcha kind of environment," he said, seemingly taken aback by the shrill partisan tone of the hearing.

Gaetz takes sides in open Tampa race, endorses former Sen. Tom Lee

In a statement emanating from the Republican Party of Florida, Senate President-designate Don Gaetz weighed in on one open GOP primary that was garnering some attention, the race to replace Sen. Ronda Storms. Gaetz is endorsing Tom Lee, the former Senate president from Brandon, over Rep. Rachel Burgin, also of Brandon. Retiring state Rep. Rich Glorioso, R-Plant City, announced yesterday that he will not be entering the race but will remain a candidate for Hillsborough County property appraiser.

Gaetz's statement:

"It is a special privilege for me to join with his friends and neighbors in the Tampa Bay area in endorsing Tom Lee for the Florida Senate. The unexpected departure of Senator Ronda Storms leaves her community and her district in need of strong leadership. In my view, Tom Lee is that strong leader.

"Senator Lee grew up and has spent his life in the community he seeks to represent.  He knows firsthand the struggles and successes of being a small business owner.  His beliefs reflect the conservative values and independent thinking of his neighbors.

 

Supervisors to halt voter purge because of unreliable list

In light of the federal government's objections and a potentially flawed set of data, Florida's elections supervisors will stop using the error-prone list to purge non-citizens from the voting rolls, supervisors of elections officials said Friday.

"My advice under these circumstances, and based upon the previous issues that have been presented concerning the list, as well as the fact that the Department has indicated its intent to take further action to review its list to determine its validity, I recommend that Supervisors of Elections cease any further action until the issues raised by the Department of Justice are resolved between the parties or by a Court,'' wrote Ron Labasky, general counsel for Florida Association of Supervisors of Election. Download 2012.06.01_-_Legal_Update_to_Supervisors

Christina White, deputy supervisor of elections for Miami Dade County, said that the county had already stopped purging voters who failed to respond to their inquiries prior to the recommendation from Labasky. 

 

"We said, let's stop; let's ask the Division of Elections to take another look at these names and, only after they perform a secondary look, will we go forward,'' White said. "We were not going to be removing any voters as a result of this particular program for lack of response. The only people we have removed were those people who admitted ineligibility.''

 

Rick Scott: state is "absolutely not" targeting minorities in noncitizen voter purge

Gov. Rick Scott said his administration is “absolutely not” intentionally targeting minorities as part of a noncitizen voter purge that the U.S. Department of Justice has ordered Florida to halt.

Scott wouldn’t say whether the state will heed DOJ’s order, which it rendered last night in a two-page letter accusing Florida of breaking two federal voting laws.

“The Secretary of State’s office is going to review what the Department of Justice has said," he said “And then we’re going to make a decision.”

But the decision might have already been made for Scott – by the county supervisors of elections who announced moments later that they will cease the search for noncitizen voters.

The hunt for noncitizen voters began about nine months ago. But, because most immigrants are of Hispanic descent in Florida, the attempted purging of the rolls disproportionately targets them.

Asked to clear up the controversy of whether the state is targeting minorities, Scott said “absolutely not.”

Jeb Bush to Congress: "Strong sense in business community...that the economy is stalling again."

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush told the House Budget Committee Friday morning that he fears the economy "is stalling again, and growing well below its historic potential." The Republican governor was invited to speak by the committee's chairman, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., author of a budget despised by Democrats in part for its proposed changes to the Medicare program for seniors.

Ryan took an immediate political approach. President Barack Obama's policies "take us in the wrong direction," Ryan said, before introducing Bush. "He has called  for higher hurdles and greater complexity in the tax code. He insists on wasteful spending on his political allies and regulatory monstrosities that protect the entrenched at the expense of the entrepreneur."

Not to be outdone, the top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., fired back. Former President George W. Bush's financial policies "lifted the yachts," Van Hollen scolded his brother, but not the rest of the boats.

Bush, perhaps unused to the partisan tone of House politics, told them he wasn't at the committee to criticize anyone, and said he wasn't used to the "9 am. food fight" that begins when the sun comes up in Washington. Politics don't get such an early start in Florida, Bush said.

Bush's full remarks, after the jump:

Romney releases 'Better Day' English-Spanish ad. ¿Cómo se dice "self deportation" en Español?

Republican Mitt Romney's campaign announced the dual release of a positive spot, a Better Day, in English and Spanish. It's a good bet the latter will run in Florida, the Hispanic-heavy swing state where Romney has the best chance to win (but not a majority) of the Hispanic vote.

Meantime, the Romney campaign has become pretty quiet about his hardline immigration stances from the GOP primary now that he's a general election candidate. ¿Cómo se dice "self deportation" en Español?

The text:

VIDEO TEXT: “What Will Be Different About A Romney Presidency?”

VOICEOVER: “What will be different about a Romney presidency?”

VIDEO TEXT: “Day 01”

VOICEOVER: “From day one, President Romney focuses on the economy and the deficit, unleashes America’s energy resources, and stands up to China on trade. President Romney’s leadership puts jobs first.”

VOICEOVER: “But there’s something more than legislation or new policy.”

VOICEOVER: “It’s the feeling we’ll have that our country’s back, back on the right track.”

VOICEOVER: “That’s what will be different about a Romney presidency.”

 MITT ROMNEY: “I’m Mitt Romney and I approve this message.”