By Yaël Ossowski | Florida Watchdog

The newest Quinnipiac University poll indicate a majority of Floridians support removing non-U.S. citizens from voter rolls

TAMPA— Sixty percent of Florida voters support Gov. Rick Scott‘s efforts to remove non- U.S. citizens from county voter registration rolls, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll.

The release of the poll on Wednesday coincides with the myriad of lawsuits filed against and on behalf of the governor’s campaign to enact voter fraud reform in the Sunshine State.

Conducted with 1,697 registered voters from June 12-18, the survey calculates that 90 percent of Republicans support the governor’s voter reform, while 60 percent of Democrats oppose him.

The poll also found that Scott’s approval rating remains steady at 39 percent midway through his first term, with 49 percent disapproval.

“Gov. Rick Scott may be a lot less popular in Florida these days than President Barack Obama, but on the face-off between the two on the purge issue, Floridians seem to be solidly in Scott’s corner,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

The survey has a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points.

The latest lawsuits filed against the state’s battle to combat voter fraud have come from the federal government and the American Civil Liberties Union, filed on June 12 in the Northern District Court in Tallahassee and on June 8 in the Middle District in Tampa.

The government and the ACLU said that by adjusting the voter rolls and removing individuals suspected as being non-U.S. citizens, the state’s actions amounted to a “systematic purge” of minorities and traditional Democratic voters.

On June 12, Scott’s Department of State filed a separate lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., charging that the Homeland Security Department’s lack of cooperation hindered the ability of the state “to protect the integrity of elections and maintain current and accurate voter registration rolls.”

Efforts to contact the ACLU and the governor’s office were unsuccessful.

The state had discovered as many as 200,000 suspected ineligible and deceased voters on registration lists, initially prompting the governor to ask for a clarification of these individuals’ status.