Before he was governor of Florida, Rick Scott was dead -- at least to election officials in the Sunshine State.
According to a report from the Associated Press, Scott, a Republican, said during a Thursday radio interview that he had been falsely listed as dead years ago, an error that forced him to cast provisional ballots in multiple elections. From the AP:
Collier County election officials confirmed that in 2006, Scott was required to cast a provisional ballot in two elections. Scott was not yet in politics at the time.
The ballot was counted both times. Provisional ballots are given to those who show up at the polls but are not listed as a registered voter.
The mistake was reportedly listed because a Floridian man named Richard E. Scott, who happened to have the same birthday as the governor, had passed away in 2006. Gov. Scott's middle name is Lynn.
The admission comes as Scott is seeking to weather a contentious legal battle between the state and the federal government over his efforts to remove supposed non-citizen voters from the election rolls.
Scott announced earlier this week that Florida was suing the Department of Homeland Security for access to a database that it has sought to use to populate its list of potential non-citizens.
Soon thereafter, the Department of Justice filed its own suit against the state for allegedly violating voting rights laws with the timing and process of the purge.
Scott has clashed with voting rights advocates repeatedly since being elected in 2010. Their concerns in this particular case revolve around studies that suggest the purge will disproportionately affect minorities and Democratic voters, while the actual data concerning alleged voting by non-citizens remains inconclusive.
Despite the controversy, Scott spoke out earlier this week, declaring the debate over the purge "over" because the effort had turned up "more than 50" non-citizens who had supposedly cast ballots in elections.
This story has been updated to include more information on Scott's 2006 vote.