The Florida Senate

THE FLORIDA SENATE SENATE DEMOCRATIC OFFICE Location 200 Senate Office Building Mailing Address 404 South Monroe Street Tallahassee, Florida 32399-1100 (850) 487-5833 Professional Staff: David Cox, Staff Director OSCAR BRAYNON II Senate’s Website: www.flsenate.gov LAUREN BOOK Democratic Leader Democratic Leader Pro Tempore July 6, 2017 The Honorable Ken Detzner Secretary of State R.A. Gray Building 500 South Bronough St. Tallahassee, FL. 32399-0205 Dear Secretary Detzner, On behalf of the Senate Democratic Caucus, I urge you to follow the example of the growing number of secretaries of state throughout the United States – Republicans and Democrats – in rejecting the request of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity for information concerning Florida’s 13 million registered voters. The request appears to be a fishing expedition on behalf of President Trump to justify his unsubstantiated claims of 3 to 5 million illegal votes from the 2016 General Election that he Tweeted cost him the popular vote. Despite making this outrageous allegation, the President has never offered one shred of evidence to support his claim. Countless elections experts and media organizations have dismissed this claim as baseless. To put the requested voter information on an unsecured federal website as Commission Vice Chair Kris Kobach is asking – even though some of this information is available under the state’s public records laws – would be reckless. Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Grimes recently described the creation of such an unsecured national voter registration database as a hacker’s dream. Releasing information about Florida voters for this national database, including information that may not be publicly available, is a blatant invasion of privacy and federal overreach. It also begs the question of why this data is being sought in the first place, and whether voter suppression may be the ultimate goal. Instead of spending countless hours and wasting taxpayers’ money fulfilling special requests for the President, such as identifying each voter’s voting history since 2006 and accounting for every conviction for elections related crimes since 2000, Florida should be fortifying its own elections systems to make sure they can withstand hackers’ attempts to access data, manipulate outcomes and disrupt elections. JOE NEGRON ANITERE FLORES President of the Senate President Pro Tempore The Honorable Ken Detzner July 6, 2017 The validity of Florida’s elections processes is well documented and we do not need a presidentially anointed Washington commission meddling where it has no business. If anyone questions the validity of Florida’s elections data, we need only be reminded of Gov. Scott’s attempt in 2012 to purge thousands of voters from the voting rolls prior to the election. Despite identifying an initial list of about 182,000 potential non-citizens, which shrank to less than 200 after errors and inaccuracies were corrected, only 85 were removed from the voting rolls. We hope you will act expeditiously in turning your attention to what can be done to improve Florida’s elections systems and ignore this federal attempt to justify the unsubstantiated Twitter claims of our Commander In Chief. Sincerely, Oscar Braynon II Lauren Book Randolph Bracy Daphne Campbell Jeff Clemens Gary Farmer, Jr. Audrey Gibson Bill Montford Bobby Powell Kevin Rader Jose Javier Rodriguez Darryl Rouson The Honorable Ken Detzner July 6, 2017 Perry E. Thurston, Jr. Linda Stewart Perry Thurston, Jr. Victor Torres, Jr. .

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