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There’s a lawsuit free-for-all forming in Florida over the state’s effort to keep illegal voters from casting ballots. At the center of the controversy is a Department of Homeland Security database. As Whitney Ray tells us, the state is suing for access, while the feds are preparing a suit to stop Florida from removing illegal voters.

A campaign to prevent illegally registered voters from casting ballots in Florida is pitting the state against the feds. The state is suing for access to the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration database known as SAVE. Secretary of State Ken Detzner says the database would help clean up Florida’s voting rolls quickly.

“This is the one single database in Washington that can help us absolutely validate non-citizenship,” said Detzner.

Detzner says DHS is required by law to allow the state to access the database for voter registration purposes.

He references a 2011 assessment conducted by DHS which says SAVE is for “…any legal purpose such as background investigations and voter registration.”

The state began negotiating for use of the database last year, but with no luck. Finally it tired of waiting and in May, launched its voter purge efforts using a list of names from the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles.

But that list was flawed and dozens of natural born citizens, some of them war heroes, were caught in the fray. Rob Smith, the Chairman of the Florida Democrats, says the governor’s efforts are politically motivated.

“He is trying to gin up his base again, get the Tea Party excited. He’s taking on the federal government. It’s a state’s rights issue,” said Smith.

While Democrats and Republicans and the state and feds battle over what to do next, the purge has been put on hold, because Florida’s Supervisors of Elections refuse to ask anymore voters if they’re legally registered.

A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security says DHS doesn’t comment on pending litigation, but though email, DHS has told the state it wants more information about the voters in question. The Chairman of the Florida Democrats says, the state isn’t being giving access to the database because of security concerns.