Florida Gets Access to Immigration Data to Check Voter Eligibility
Thursday, August 16, 2012
By: Nicole Creston

Florida election officials have signed a formal agreement with the Department of Homeland Security which allows the state to use a national immigration database to screen voters. Florida has been trying to get access to the database for months.

Florida election officials wanted to check if certain registered voters are non-U.S. citizens and therefore ineligible to vote.

At first, the Department of Homeland Security refused to open the database to the state, then reversed the decision earlier this summer. But DHS officials did not sign a binding agreement with Florida until this week.

The DHS database tracks anyone who has entered the country legally.

Florida officials will use it to screen a list of names of about 26-hundred registered voters the state has suspected may be ineligible.

Some county election officials stopped using that list after finding it contained more than 500 people who were citizens.