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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 9, 2013
CONTACT: ACLU of Florida Media Office, (786) 363 - 2737, media@aclufl.org
Lauderhill - Today, ACLU of Florida Director of Legal Operations Nancy Abudu is attending the fifth and final in a series of roundtables being hosted by the Florida Department of State to encourage support for the Scott Administration’s proposal to resurrect the flawed voter purges which the state attempted before the 2012 election.
The previous purge effort was described by county Supervisors of Elections as an "embarrassment," "sloppy," and "disgusting." The ACLU of Florida filed a lawsuit in federal court to challenge that effort, but that case was dismissed following the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder which gutted the Voting Rights Act (VRA), and in which Abudu was an attorney for the ACLU defending the VRA.
Now, Secretary of State Ken Detzner is travelling across Florida hosting roundtables with County Supervisors of Elections as part of “Project Integrity,” an effort to boost public support for a revived purge effort. ACLU of Florida representatives have also appeared at the previous roundtables in Panama City, Jacksonville, Orlando and Sarasota.
The following statement may be attributed to ACLU of Florida Director of Legal Operations Nancy Abudu:
“After four out of five of these roundtables, the critical answers about how the purge will impact democracy in our state have yet to be satisfactorily answered. At each one of these roundtables so far, Supervisors of Elections and members of the public have expressed their concerns about how the purge system will work, how much it will cost, why the state is relying on flawed government databases, and how it will ensure that those who are wrongly removed will be allowed to vote. Given the embarrassing record with voter purges in Florida, those concerns are valid, and the answers to those questions remain frustratingly vague.
“Restoring trust in our state’s elections system requires more than paying lip-service to ‘integrity’ while creating new barriers for naturalized citizens to jump through. It requires solving the real problems that have plagued our elections and making sure that no eligible citizen is denied their opportunity to cast a ballot. It also requires vigilance on the part of Floridians: if you or anyone you know has problems because of the state’s newly resurrected purge program, please contact the ACLU of Florida for help in ensuring your voice still counts in our democracy.”
Prior to today’s roundtable, Nancy Abudu will be speaking at a rally on the West side of Lauderhill Mall at 9:45AM.
The roundtable begins at 10:30AM in the Broward County Supervisors of Election Supervisor of Elections Lauderhill Branch Office, inside the Lauderhill Mall.
Nancy Abudu will be available for comment to the press following the roundtable.