Rick Scott’s Florida Purge Effort Cost Localities Thousands
Now that Gov. Rick Scotts (R-FL) administration has obtained access to the U.S. Department of Homeland Securitys (DHS) Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database records that Florida could have received months ago had it provided the necessary information to DHS it has officially abandoned the error-riddled original purge list. But this move comes only after local governments were forced to spend thousands purging voters from the rolls.
The Scott administration now acknowledges that the 2,600-person list it once deemed sure-fire non-citizen voters is obsolete. As ThinkProgress reported, that list contained hundreds of eligible U.S. citizens.
But beyond inconveniencing hundreds of legitimate voters, the Scott administrations reliance on that earlier bad list came with a heavy cost to already cash-strapped local governments. A ThinkProgress survey of six county elections supervisors reveals that that 2,031 letters they sent out, at the Scott administrations instruction, cost them at least $10,000.
Averaged out, that comes to more than $5.14 per name and projects to over $13,000 in unnecessary costs to local governments. While this number may not seem huge, it doesnt include the costs to the state government or the opportunity cost of wasting local employees time on processing the purge efforts, instead of on ensuring fair and efficient elections. And the number is only going to go up with the Scott administration promising more purges in the future.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/07/23/566031/rick-scotts-florida-purge-effort-cost-localities-thousands/