Lawsuit Claims the Dead Are Voting in Florida

(CN) — There are more people registered to vote in Broward County, Florida than there are living (and of voting age) there, a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Rights Union claims.

That means dead people, non-citizens and frauds may be casting ballots, the nonprofit claims.

"When a county has more people registered to vote than there are eligible residents, it's an open door for vote fraud," said ACRU Chairman and CEO Susan Carleson. "Broward's Supervisor of Elections, Dr. Brenda Snipes, is not using all of the tools available to keep Florida elections clean."

Carleson's organization. is a Conservative nonprofit that says it promotes election integrity and compliance with federal election laws. Its June 27 complaint accuses Snipes of failing to conduct reasonable voter list maintenance for elections for federal office, as required by Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.

According to the complaint, Snipes has also declined to produce records that Carleson's nonprofit requested, which is also a violation of the NVRA.

The organization concluded something was amiss by comparing publicly available information from the U.S. Census Bureau and the federal Election Assistance Commission.

"At the time of the 2014 general election cycle, approximately 103% of the citizens of voting age were registered to vote and could cast a ballot in Broward County," the suit claims. "In 2010, 106% of the citizens of voting age were registered to vote and could cast a ballot in Broward County."

Although Snipes has been given reliable information regarding registered voters who have died or no longer resided in the county, she hasn't implemented programs to update the list, the suit claims.

In January, the nonprofit sent a letter to Snipes explaining the problem, and Snipes responded.

"At no time during my tenure, which began in November 2003, has the number of registered voters outnumbered the live persons residing in Broward County," Snipes wrote. She added that Broward adheres strictly to Florida voter list maintenance programs and attached some reports from 2010-2015.

Those reports showed that in the past five years, only 18 people have been removed from the list for not being U.S. citizens, while the noncitizen population in Broward is 256,430, according to the American Community Survey. That's more than 13 percent of the population in Broward.

To update the lists, the nonprofit has urged Snipes to use jury excusal forms, which identify people who say they are no longer living in Broward County, along with obsolete mailing addresses.

"It would be simple to cross-check the excusal forms or other data regarding jurors who have moved, died, or declared non-United States citizenship to ensure those persons are not on the voter registry," the complaint states.

Snipes responded to a request for comment from Courthouse News by explaining that she can't comment now, but will be able to once she and her staff have a chance to review the complaint. The suit requests that Snipes be enjoined from continuing to violate the law and forced to implement "reasonable and effective registration list maintenance programs to cure failures to comply with Section 8 of the NRVA." It also requests that Snipes be ordered to respond to the request for records concerning program implementation. Lastly, it requests injunctive relief "to ensure that the 2016 Florida statewide general election is not conducted in Broward County using voter rolls with ineligible registrants."

William Davis with Foley and Lardner LLP represents the plaintiffs, but could not be reached for comment.

"Broward was one of four Florida counties that was asked to do a recount in the 2000 presidential election," Carleson said. "We think it's time they cleaned up their rolls before the next one."

The ACRU has filed similar lawsuits in Texas and Mississippi counties where Democrats have recently dominated in presidential elections, according to the Miami Herald.

Robert Knight, a senior fellow with ACRU, said that more than 200 counties across the United States have the same issue Broward does.

He said in addition to the two states cited by the Miami Herald, the organization has also filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania.

It each case, Knight said, a lawsuit was filed based on how egregious the number discrepancies are and how familiar the ACRU attorneys are with the law in states where it is happening.

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