Florida Denies DOJ Request

Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner said Florida will ignore the Department of Justice's request to halt its voter verification process. 

Chris Cate, a spokesman for Detzner, told the Huffington Post: 

“We have an obligation to make sure the voter rolls are accurate and we are going to continue forward and do everything that we can legally do to make sure than ineligible voters cannot vote,” said Chris Cate, a spokesman for Detzner. “We are firmly committed to doing the right thing and preventing ineligible voters from being able to cast a ballot. We are not going to give up our efforts to make sure the voter rolls are accurate."

The Department of Justice declined comment on Florida's response, according to the Huffington Post. 

In a letter to Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner, the Justice Department  said the state's procedure to verify voting rolls violates the Voting Rights Act of 1973 and the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.

The Department of Justice said the system to remove voters from the rolls cannot take place within 90 days of an election. Because of the Aug. 14 primary, Florida needs to stop the process now, according to the Department of Justice. 

To complicate matters, Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark announced Friday she is in Pinellas because of inaccurate information provided to the county. 

Of 36 potential non-citizens on Pinellas' voter rolls, five were found to be legal registered voters. 

"The accuracy of the voter registration database is of the utmost importance,” Clark said in a news release, “and we will continue our efforts to ensure the information is current. However, we will not use unreliable data.”