Duval elections office moving forward, cautiously, with voter purge

With the state gaining access to the federal SAVE database, elections officials are moving slowly in to untred waters.

“What we’re basically doing is playing catch-up.  We’ve never done this before,” says Duval County Supervisor of Elections Jerry Holland.

Holland says maintaining the voter rolls is something the office is actively engaged in, but the lists he receives from the state can often be out of date.  The SAVE, or “Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements” list is updated every 48 hours, so Holland says it should provide the accuracy they have been looking for.

But updating the rolls may not happen before the August primaries.  Holland says because there is only a month before those elections, they don’t want to sacrifice accuracy for speed.

“We don’t want any confusion, we don’t want anyone coming back and saying ‘Yes, I am a US citizen’ because it takes away the validity of the entire list,” he says.

He says, bottom line, the rolls must be accurate.  And that is something they will work quickly towards achieving once given the full clearance.