Florida is at it again. It's the scene of the crime where Secretary of State Katherine Harris helped Republicans steal the 2000 presidential election for George Bush. But now it's Governor Rick Scott who is trying to steal the election for Mitt Romney.
Earlier this summer, taking a page straight out of Katherine Harris' playbook, the Florida governor deployed a massive and systematic effort to purge up to 182,000 voters from the state's voting rolls.
Thanks to your activism and that of many others, we were able to generate massive public pressure, and the Department of Justice issued a challenge to the purge. However, Gov. Scott threatened to defy the DOJ. It was Florida's county election supervisors, a group that included 30 Republicans, who emboldened by public support refused to go along with Gov. Scott's plan to steal the election.1
But as it becomes clear that a win by Mitt Romney in Florida could decide the state's 29 electoral votes and the presidential election, Gov. Scott restarted his purge of registered voters. We have to act now to ensure the county supervisors of election once again block Gov. Scott's voter suppression scheme.
The Florida county supervisors of elections stood up and did the right thing this past June when they stopped Scott's voting purge by refusing to use his "unreliable data" to purge their county's voting rolls.2 We need them to stand up again.
What is happening in Florida is the same old story of Republicans using the irrational fear of "voter fraud" as cover while they work to disenfranchise eligible voters. The truth is, voter fraud is exceedingly rare. More Americans are struck by lightning than commit voter fraud. As noted by legal scholar Jeffrey Toobin:
As many independent studies have found, "voter fraud" is a cure in search of a disease. There is no significant voter-fraud problem in the United States. Rather, these laws are transparent attempts by Republican majorities to stifle and suppress the number of minorities and poor people (mostly Democrats) who go to the polls.3
The real problem, the one that can affect the outcome of our elections if we're not vigilant, is voter suppression. Which is exactly what Gov. Scott is trying to do, and it's part of a large-scale Republican crusade to suppress participation by millions of voters in the 2012 presidential election.
We need as many Americans as possible to protest Gov. Scott's latest scheme to disenfranchise voters. And we need to turn up the pressure now, before it's too late.
Let's make sure the election officials in Florida know that the whole country is watching, and we will hold them responsible for the integrity of their state's election which could decide the next president of the United States. We will not stand by and let another illegitimate president be inaugurated because of a stolen election in Florida.
In 2000, Florida's Secretary of State Katherine Harris provided the winning margin for George W. Bush by helping to "wrongfully" remove 7,000 Floridians — the overwhelming majority of whom were African Americans — from the voting rolls prior to the 2000 election.4 We will not let Gov. Rick Scott repeat this feat in 2012. Florida's county supervisors of elections have stopped him before. They have the power to stop him again.
Gov. Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama are locked in a tight election race which could very well be decided by Florida's 29 electoral votes. We must take action now. Click below to automatically sign our petition.
Thank you for all you do to protect the integrity of our Democracy.
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