The Federal Department of Justice has written a letter to letter to Florida’s Secretary of State, Ken Detzner, ordering him to stop trying to purge the Florida voter rolls of ineligible “voters.”  Interestingly, the order is predicated on technical, procedural grounds: five counties in Florida still are subject to the National Voting Rights Act of 1964, and Detzner didn’t say, “Mother, may I?” to DoJ before attempting the purge.

Never mind that an early inspection of the state’s rolls turned up as many as 182,000 folks registered to vote who may not be US citizens.  Never mind that, as the spokesman for the Florida Department of State, Chris Cate, said,

Bottom line is we are firmly committed to doing the right thing and preventing ineligible voters from being able to cast a ballot[.]

Never mind that the state has had in place for months a request to the Department of Homeland Security to match the state’s driver’s license records with the DHS’ databases to facilitate the assessment of citizenship and thereby of voting eligibility.  The DHS has been unresponsive.

This move comes on the heels of Attorney General Eric Holder’s racist speech which he gave to the Council of Black Churches last Wednesday concerning voter eligibility.  The Wall Street Journal had some choice words concerning those racist words from our AG; I won’t go into that here.

But such attacks, together with Advancement Project Co-director, Penda Hair’s ironic remark, which included this

We commend the attorney general of the United States Eric Holder for ensuring that the right to vote, the fundamental pillar of our democracy is protected for all American citizens

make the larger point here.  In the name of protecting the sanctity of an American voter’s ballot, Progressives are actively attacking it.  They pretend not to see that if ineligibles aren’t prevented from voting, the votes of honest Americans are diluted or outright cancelled by ineligible, false, votes.

Al Franken (D, MN), for instance, was elected to the US Senate in 2008 by 312 votes out of 2.9 million votes cast.  In 2004, President George Bush carried Florida by 537 votes out of nearly 6 million cast.  Identifying ineligible voters and getting them off the rolls matters.

I have to ask: what’s the Progressives’ real objection to an honest voter roll?