Florida Secretary of State suspends “Project Integrity” initiative

Florida Secretary of State suspends “Project Integrity” initiative

By Roger Caldwell

     Finally someone in Governor Scott’s administration is starting to make some sense, when it comes to voting in Florida. In the last election cycle Governor Scott’s administration wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars on a pro-gram to suppress the vote. They will use a title for an initiative that sounds credible, but is used for a different purpose.

Republican governors around the country have also implemented in their states, an initiative to protect the integrity of the voting process, and they call it “Project Integrity.” Everyone knows that this is a code statement for a witch hunt, to purge the voting rolls in their state of minority voters. The demographics are changing in many states with more Latino and Black voters, and Republicans are trying anything to stay in power.

Republicans understand that their party has protected privilege, corporate greed, systemic racism, and Americans are searching for a change. Many Americans believe that the entire political system is rotten to the core, and the Democrats are just a little better than the Republicans. Everyone knows that American politics is about marketing, raising money, and building personal relationships.

In response to today’s announcement, League of Women Voters of Florida President Deirdre Macnab issued the following statement; “Florida voters should be delighted by this news. Independently elected Supervisors of Elections are already standing sentry on making sure that only eligible citizens are voting. Programs like “Project Integrity” have proven time and time again to disproportionally impact minority voters and erroneously disenfranchise those that are eligible.”

There is no way that Florida can be pride of its history on voting. Starting with Governor Bush, it was embarrassing that the state could lose ballots of voters in a presidential election. Maybe it was a coincidence that his brother was running for office, but it happened anyway and Gore loss the election.

Also in the presidential election of 2012, our governor blatantly suppressed the vote by cutting the number of days and hours for early voting, and it becomes a national and international news story. There were Floridians waiting 6 to 8 hours to vote and our governor refused to extend the hours or days, and it took 3 days to count the ballots.

There never appeared to be a problem with the administration of the voting process, but the problems manifested themselves on the gubernatorial department levels. When Governor Scott decided to inappropriately target 182,000 registered voters as in-eligible, he wasted thousands of taxpayer money and again embarrassed the state.

It is a step in the right direction for that Secretary of State Ken Detzner calling off Scott’s “Project Integrity” and suspending the project until 2015. The entire project has always been driven by partisan politics and a secret process to suppress the vote.

From the very beginning of the process, the integrity issue has been with the governor and his cronies. There is too much corrupt money being spent in elections, and the dishonesty begins when our leaders get behind closed doors.