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The Truth-O-Meter Says:
St. Petersburg, Florida -- Tampa Bay is the biggest battleground for the presidential election. So Democrats and Republicans want to make sure every vote counts.
10 News reporter Allison Kropff and PolitiFact Florida look into two statements by politicians on each side of the aisle about those all important votes.
Florida is the state to win in the 2012 election and Republicans and Democrats know every vote counts, which is why there's a great debate over those votes.
We'll start with a statement by Republican Party of Florida Chairman Lenny Curry, "More than 250 groups, ranging across the entire political spectrum, have filed with the state and are registering voters right now."
He's backing third party voter registration changes and he's right on the numbers. PolitiFact Florida actually found 293.
"He's wrong when they say they're registering voters right now, in fact we went and looked at the list and more than half aren't registering voters at all," says Aaron Sharockman with PolitiFact Florida.
Of those on the list, PolitiFact Florida found six registering the vast majority.
Election laws passed in 2011 put requirements on third party groups giving them only 48 hours to turn them in or get fined. A federal judge declared that law unconstitutional last week.
PolitiFact Florida rates Curry's statement: HALF TRUE.
Now to Senator Bill Nelson comparing Governor Rick Scott's attempt at purging non-citizen voters from the voter rolls to the 2000 attempt at purging felons.
In a letter to the Governor, Senator Nelson says the noncitizen purge is a "concern". "In the 2000 Florida election, at least 1,100 eligible voters were wrongly dropped from voting rolls in an attempt to purge a list of felons. Many of those who were dropped showed up to vote and were told they could not."
"They hired a company out of state who went on this crusade to try to find felons across the state who are not legally able to vote. They came up with a huge list, but their list was inaccurate. For instance, it included people who weren't felons, it included people who are felons that are potentially out of state and it wrongly included people who weren't felons at all," says Sharockman.
Senator Nelson says at least 1,100 were wrongly dropped from the rolls. PolitiFact Florida found numbers as high as 12,000, but there are no exact figures.
PolitiFact Florida rates Nelson's statement: TRUE
To read more about these fact checks, click here:http://www.politifact.com/florida/.
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