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For nearly a year the state has haggled with the Department of Homeland Security over access to its immigration database.

Today, the haggling paid off. This afternoon DHS officially granted the state access. The database will help the state identify non-US citizens who are illegally registered to vote in Florida. Chris Cate, a spokesman with the Florida Division of Elections says the state wants to begin its new voter purge as soon as possible.

“We know there is a General Election coming up very soon, so we know we have to work promptly. But we absolutely are going to be very thorough in this process. Tonight we are actually going to begin training employees to use this new system,” said Cate.

The state hopes to have identified some illegally registered voters by early next week. The names of those offenders will be sent to county supervisors of elections. It will be up to the supervisors to remove the non-citizens from the voting roles.