Soledad O’Brien Confronts FL Secretary Of State Over Voter Roll Purging Controversy
On CNN’s Starting Point on Friday, Soledad O’Brien took Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner to task over the controversy brewing over the state’s decision to purge the voter rolls. “There are people that would say timing is suspect,” O’Brien observed. “You could wait until after the election and spend a couple years trying to in a coordinated fashion remove who should be off the rolls and ensure those off the rolls and should be on the rolls are the right people. What do you say to that argument?”
“My argument is as chief elections officer of the state of Florida that if there’s a noncitizen eligible to vote and votes in this election, they’ll neutralize and delete someone else’s vote that’s eligible to vote and I can tell you, I hear from people every day that call my office and explain that they do not want their vote eliminated by a noncitizen who is registered to vote,” Detzner responded. “That’s the mission that I’m undertaking and I want to make sure this fall that everyone who is eligible to vote will vote and that votes will be counted here in Florida.”
O’Brien noted that voters eligible to vote could be disenfranchised by the decision to purge the voter rolls.
“You could take a voter who is eligible and block them so when it comes voting day, they cannot vote. What’s the number you are comfortable with doing that. One person eligible but not on the rolls, five people? Where do you draw the line?”
“No individual who is eligible to vote has been removed from the voter list,” Detzner countered. “Everyone has been notified by the supervisors of election is given due process to notify that supervisor as to their citizenship or not. I’m confident that our due process will make sure that everyone is treated fairly going forward and no eligible citizens will be eliminated from the voter rolls. It’s noncitizens that we are trying to eliminate from the rolls so that citizens that are eligible, their vote will be counted in Florida.”
Later, O’Brien grilled Detzner over the fact that Democrats would be disproportionately impacted by the voter purge.
“As I’m sure you know, sir, part of the question is the number — if you look at the stats, it’s just under 60% of voters talking about in the state of Florida are Latino. The people who are on those rolls — 2,700 suspected at this point — are overwhelmingly black and Latino,” O’Brien pointed out. “Those are people who would overwhelmingly most likely vote Democratic. How much of this is just political at the end of the day?”
“At the end of the day, your assumptions are wrong,” Detzner shot back. “We don’t look at individuals, ethnic, religious, sexual origin, Democratic party, Republican party, Independent. This process is looked at independently as to if someone is a citizen or noncitizen and the idea of anyone’s ethnic origin or party to be part of this process is incorrect and the wrong assumption.”
Watch O’Brien question Detzner over the voter purging controversy below via CNN:
