Wrong.
Aaron Deslatte does better, in this grossly mis-headlined piece: "In GOP victory, Florida to get access to feds' list of noncitizens".
As Deslatte writes, "Florida has agreed that it can challenge voters only if the state provides a 'unique identifier,' such as an 'alien number,' for each person in question."
Alien numbers generally are assigned to foreigners living in the country legally, often with visas or other permits such as green cards. Unless they become naturalized citizens, however, they cannot vote."The SAVE list is unlikely to catch illegal immigrants in any state who might have managed to register to vote because such people typically would not have an alien number."
The agreement will prevent Florida from using only a name and birthdate to seek federal data about a suspected noncitizen on voter rolls.
Deslatte fails to make clear that the feds had previously failed to give Florida access to the SAVE database for use with the Florida Voter Registration list only because of the state's inability to furnish "unique identifiers", such as alien registration numbers or other numerical identifiers found on immigration-related documents. Such documentation is required for all governmental agencies seeking access to the federal database.
The federal government's SAVE database was always available to Scott and his minions, so long as they could furnish "unique identifiers".
With this latest development, then, Scott has merely agreed to the federal government's longstanding requirement, "that so long as Florida has the ability to uniquely identify the registered voters, it could make arrangements to access" the SAVE program database*. Stated differently, Scott has finally come around to the federal government's preconditions to accessing the database; preconditions that Scott had previously rejected, and, it appears, will be largely unable to meet.
This is no "victory for Republicans", but rather a victory for Scott's PR flacks who have largely who succeeded in playing Florida's ink stained wretches.
And, as Deslatte correctly observes, Scott's use of the federal SAVE list "is unlikely to catch illegal immigrants in any state who might have managed to register to vote because such people typically would not have an alien number."
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The complete passage from Deslatte's article reads: "In a letter dated Monday to Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas reiterated that so long as Florida has the ability to uniquely identify the registered voters, it could make arrangements to access what's known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program."