Gov. Rick Scott's Department of State recently amassed a list of 180,000 possible non-citizens who were registered to vote in Florida. Eventually that list was whittled down to 2,600, and even many on that list were found to be actual citizens.
Turns out so far only a single person on that list of registered voters so far was actually a non-citizen who cast a ballot. The man was Josef Sever, a resident of Broward County but a citizen of Canada.
Sever, 52, admitted in a Miami court admitted yesterday to having registered to vote and casting absentee ballots in the 2004 and 2008 election despite not being an actual citizen. Sever was born in Austria but became a citizen of Canada in 1979. He had never obtained U.S. citizenship but registered to vote with no party affiliation.
He'll be sentenced on November 9 and could face up to five years in prison.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement says that it is currently investigating a total of six cases of voter fraud. Of course, Rick Scott and other Republican politicians claimed that voter fraud was a widespread problem in Florida when they passed several controversial voter registration and election laws. Those laws have had a noticeable impact on the registration of Democratic voters.
Sever, however, also did a few other illegal things while falsely claiming to be an American citizen.
According to The Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau, he bought guns four times from a Hialeah firearms dealer between 2007 and 2010 while claiming to be a citizen. He renewed his Florida concealed weapons and firearm permit in 2010 while claiming to be a citizen as well.
Scott's administration has so far not compiled a list of possible non-citizens who have claimed citizenship while applying for concealed weapons permits.
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