Tallahassee, Florida- August 10, 2012

A battle between Florida and the federal government over potentially ineligible voters is gearing back up.
Florida officials on Thursday warned that the state may take new legal action because it still has not gotten access to a federal immigration database.
The state wants to use to the database to determine the citizenship of roughly 2,600 registered voters.
Last month the federal government announced it would let the state use the database, but no final agreement has been reached.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice is demanding information from nine county election officials regarding voters the state initially identified as being ineligible.
Florida on Thursday released to the media and others what it called an obsolete list of more than 180,000 registered voters the state suspected of being non-citizens.
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Tallahassee, Florida- August 9, 2012

The state’s legal battle to remove non-citizens from the voting rolls may not be resolved until next year.

A federal judge overseeing a suit against the state has scheduled a date in the case for January. In the mean time the Florida Division of Elections is trying to get access to the Department of Homeland Security SAVE Database to check voters’ immigration status. The division’s spokesperson Chris Cate says they’re ready to start removing illegal voters as soon DHS hands over the database.

“As soon as that agreement is signed we will begin checking names through the SAVE database. As a matter of fact we are actually doing a training today on the SAVE program so when that agreement is signed we will already be prepared,” said Cate.

DHS has already verbally agreed to grant the state access to the database, but now they’re asking from more information before the agreement is put if in writing.