Governor Rick Scott not dead; alive and voting

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Governor Rick Scott begins most mornings with a calls to talk radio shows. Thursday, he was defending his efforts to remove potential non citizens from the voter rolls, when he dropped a story about when he went to vote in 2006.
 
“They said I had passed away. I said, 'here’s my driver's license, I’m here, I’m really alive.' So they allowed me to vote provisionally, and then they went back and checked and saw actually I was alive.”

It was Florida’s Secretary of State, using another agency’s database, who told the Supervisor of Elections in Naples that Rick Scott was dead.

The Secretary of State sent information to Collier County that showed Richard E. Scott, born 12/1/1952, had died in January ‘06.  But the governor’s middle initial is ‘L”.

Collier County Deputy Elections Supervisor Tim Durham says it is the only time he has seen such a mistake. “Very unusual set of circumstances. The other Rick Scott has a different middle initial, he was also a Florida resident, with the exact same date of birth.”

Governor Scott used the story to illustrate his point that voters who are ineligible will indeed be able to cast a vote and have it counted, but Howard Simon with the American Civil Liberties Union says there is another lesson to be learned. “What happened to him shows what is wrong about using inaccurate data to throw people off the voting rolls.”

The Secretary of State’s office says it now no longer relies on the Department of Health database.

The Department of State recently used a Social Security database to tell local supervisors to remove the names of fifty one thousand voters who had died out of state.