Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) approved a closure of his state's only tuberculosis hospital after a stern warning about an outbreak from the Center for Disease Control.  Ed Schultz has the details. 

Florida governor Rick Scott is leading the effort to get as many as 180,000 potentially-ineligible voters off the rolls.

Florida's suing the Obama administration to get access to a federal data base. The Justice Department and civil rights groups are suing back, trying to halt the purge.

Rolling Stone contributor Ari Berman joined Michael Eric Dyson last night to discuss the voter purge efforts in Florida and beyond.

Florida's former Secretary of State, a Republican, is saying he "didn't feel comfortable" carrying out Governor Rick Scott's controversial voter purge because the list he was using was so flawed.

As Michael Eric Dyson explained Wednesday on The Ed Show, Kurt Browning told The Miami Herald that it was clear to him the state didn't have a reliable list with which to conduct the purge, which is now the subject of a federal lawsuit. 

"I didn't feel comfortable rolling this out," Browning said. "Something was telling me this isn't going to fly. We didnt have our i's dotted and our t's crossed when I was there." 

Of course, after Browning stepped down, the purge went forward under his replacement, Ken Detzner. The purge, The Herald reports, used a DMV database that had "limited and often-outdated citizenship information that carried a high risk of making lawful voters look like noncitizens."

 And wouldn't you know it, scores of legitimate voters have been tossed off the rolls—though many likely won't find out until they try to vote in November.

AP Photo/The Tampa Bay Times, James Borchuck, Pool

Florida Gov. Rick Scott uses a magnifying glass to look at finger prints in an 8th grade science class at Carwise Middle School in Palm Harbor, Fla., April 9, 2012.

The U.S. Justice Department is moving aggressively against Florida's voter purge, suing the state today.

The DOJ suit alleges Florida's search for non-citizen voters, initiated at the request of Republican Gov. Rick Scott, violates a "quiet period" required by federal law during the 90 days before an election.

Florida's primary is set for August 14.

The suit also contends Florida has been using inaccurate and unreliable voter verification procedures, which also violates federal law.

The lawsuit comes just one day after the state sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security over the purge.   

Florida wants to check the names of its registered voters against a DHS immigration database to help weed out non-citizens.  

Florida has already sent thousands of letters to registered voters across the state, saying they've been identified as potential non-citizens.  These people must now prove their citizenship or be purged from the voting rolls.

But since 2000, there have been only 178 allegations of fraud in the whole state, out of 37 million votes cast.  That's 0.0005%.

All 67of Florida's Democratic, Republican and independent county elections supervisors have joined together to oppose and stop Scott’s attempts to suppress the vote. 

Republicans want to increase their chances of winning close elections by disenfranchising core Democratic voting blocs such as the poor, the elderly, minorities and the young, just as they did in 2000.

Gov. Rick Scott (and Katherine Harris wannabe) announced today that Florida is suing the federal government because it won't allow the state to check the citizenship status of registered voters against databases.   

"We want to have fair, honest elections in our state and so we have been put in a position that we have to sue the federal government to get this information," Scott said today, making the announcement this afternoon on Fox News. 

Florida last year began looking for non-U.S. citizens on the voter rolls. A comparison of driver's license records with voter registration records turned up as many as 182,000 registered voters who may not be U.S. citizens.   

State officials have asked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for access to its SAVE system — a compilation of at least a dozen immigration databases — to help it determine how many non-citizens are registered to vote in Florida. But that request has been turned down by the DHS.

Republicans want to increase their chances of winning close elections by disenfranchising core Democratic voting blocs such as the poor, the elderly, minorities and the young. 

Remember 2000 and what happened as a consequence?

A Florida Democrat has a message for his GOP governor: Stop trying to suppress voter turnout to help your party.

Gov. Rick Scott has come up with a list of 180,000 voters who his administration suspects are ineligible to cast ballots in the battleground state. The problem? Florida has cast such a wide net that it seems to have snared many legitimate voters.

A Miami Herald analysis shows that Hispanics, Democrats, and independent minded voters are most likely to be targeted by Scott's initiative — potentially hurting President Obama and other Democrats in November.

That's outraging Democratic Congressman Ted Deutch. "He's got to stop this," the lawmaker said of the governor on The Ed Show on Thursday.

"The whole plan is to suppress voter turnout, whether by scrubbing the roles or whether by convincing people it’s just too difficult. That’s what we have to remind them. They can’t give up,” he added, noting that several of his constituents received letters saying they were ineligible to vote — even though they are American citizens.

The strategy of zapping voters from the rolls isn't exactly revolutionary. As the Herald notes, "Florida went looking for potential noncitizen voters, following the lead of Republican secretaries of state in Colorado and New Mexico — two other Hispanic-heavy swing states this election year."

Something similar happened in the run-up to the chaotic 2000 presidential election in Florida, when it was discovered that thousands of black voters were wrongly prevented from casting ballots because they had names similar to convicted felons. George W. Bush won the state by 537 votes. 

An NBC-Marist poll released Thursday showed President Obama leading presumed Republican nominee Mitt Romney 48% to 44%.