No Gadsden County names on voter purge list

         Supervisor of Elections, Shirley Green Knight, said the recent communications from Gov. Rick Scott to the 67 supervisors in Florida concerning purging those people from the voter registration rolls who are no citizens does not affect Gadsden County.

          "When the list was released there were 2,600 names. The list was divided up by counties and there were none on the list for Gadsden," she said.

        The state had a list of non-citizens who were registered to vote, which was released about 60 days ago. The supervisors were to go through the list and cross reference that list with the driver license but we don't have the tools or the resources to do that even if we had names on the list, Green-Knight said.

       So far, approximately 500 names on the list have been found to be U.S. citizens, she said.     

       According to Scott’s office, the process to remove non-U.S. citizens from Florida’s voter database actually began in Spring 2011. A few months later, in September 2011, Florida elections officials asked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for access to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database.

         After waiting several months to gain access to this database, Florida initiated the process to remove ineligible voters based on the best information available to the state.

         The states of Colorado, Michigan, and North Carolina have also requested access to the SAVE system for a similar purpose. But the federal government has yet to grant access to the system.