After Mistakenly Purging Citizens, Florida Agrees to Let Them Vote

By LIZETTE ALVAREZ, NYT

MIAMI — In a partial victory for voter rights and immigrant groups, Florida residents who were mistakenly removed from the voter rolls this year because the state classified them as noncitizens will be returned to the rolls and allowed to vote in November.

The Florida Department of State, which initiated the review of noncitizens on the voter rolls, also agreed Wednesday to inform the 2,625 people on the list who are eligible to vote that their voting rights had been fully restored. Still unresolved is whether Florida broke a federal law preventing voter purges within 90 days of an election.

The agreement stems from a lawsuit brought by several groups that said the so-called voter purge was discriminatory because it singled out mostly immigrants. “There will be no purging before the election,” said Katherine Culliton-González, director of voter protection for the Advancement Project, one of the civil rights groups that sued the state. “American citizens won’t be purged, and naturalized citizens won’t be purged. For us, it’s a great victory.”

But the state said Wednesday that it would move forward with its program and would take a closer look at the voter rolls now that it had access to a federal database containing citizenship information. Florida received access to the Department of Homeland Security database, known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, or SAVE, in July after it sued the agency.

(More here.)