St. Petersburg Times
Making Sure Votes Count Series:
EDITORIALS
St.
Petersburg Times; St. Petersburg, Fla. May 3, 2001
Florida's longest election night may finally see
the dawn. House and Senate negotiators agreed Wednesday on
legislation to assure that every vote will count. Every county will
use optically scanned ballots. Whenever the voter's choice is clear,
it must be counted.
But to get there, a questionable
deal was struck. Senate negotiators yielded to the House on barring
out-of-state contributions from counting toward the public matching
funds that Florida provides to statewide candidates who agree to
limit their spending. That's plainly to the benefit of Gov. Jeb
Bush, a prodigious fundraiser who doesn't accept public financing,
and to the detriment of his prospective Democratic opponents next
year.
Under equal circumstances, a
reasonable case could be made that non-Florida money shouldn't be
counted toward Florida's matching funds. It's a shame that a
must-pass election reform bill was co- opted to the Republicans'
advantage.
The compromise also repeals the
runoff primary - unwisely - but only for the 2002 elections. The
runoff will be restored automatically in 2004 unless the Legislature
votes again to kill it.
The runoff, as we have insisted on
this page, has served Florida well and should not be abolished. It
has produced Florida's best governors - LeRoy Collins and Reubin
Askew among them - and protects the parties and the public from
lunatic fringes. In their initial decision to repeal it, lawmakers
were reacting not to the merits but to the problems imposed on
election supervisors who must manage a primary, a runoff and a
general election within a nine-week period.
The compromise is certainly
preferable to repealing the runoff forever, and it allows time to
consider an instant runoff - or second- choice voting, as some call
it - as a permanent substitute. In many ways, that would be even
better.
The conference committee got to that
decision by a curious route.
The House Republican leadership had
startled everyone by demanding to keep the runoff, which both houses
had voted to repeal. It threatened to be a
deal-breaker.
Few people took the House leaders
entirely at their word that they had belatedly rediscovered the
fundamental principle behind the runoff - the people's right to
vote. Some suspected that it had to do with the Senate's refusal to
raise campaign-contribution limits as the House has proposed. The
law allows $500 per contributor for each election and counts the
primary, runoff and general election separately. So to eliminate the
runoff means that candidates can raise only $1,000 instead of
$1,500. But when senators offered Wednesday to allow $1,500 without
a runoff, House negotiators insisted that the dispute "is not about
money." Not their money, anyway.
So they'll have to settle for less
next year or hit up more donors. It's a sad commentary, that this
modest bit of campaign finance control could be obtained only at the
cost of curtailing the public's right to vote. Yes, every vote will
count. But there'll be one less opportunity to cast
it.
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Recalling September Primary
'Reform' Series: COLUMNS by Martin Dyckman St.
Petersburg Times; St. Petersburg, Fla. May 1, 2001
Abstract: Though turnout in the
runoffs has averaged only 22 percent since 1970, the average was
twice as high in the eight statewide runoffs from 1954 through 1970.
More people voted in five of those runoffs than had voted in the
first primaries. Since 1968, however, that has happened only twice.
As a matter of fact, turnout in the first primaries has been down
markedly since 1970. Before then, it averaged 53.5 percent. From
1970 since, it has averaged only 31.5 percent.
In that first September election,
four Democrats spent a sweaty summer competing for the right to take
on incumbent Claude R. Kirk Jr., the first Republican governor since
Reconstruction, whose antics and power grabs had split his own
party. State Sen. Reubin Askew of Pensacola, who had begun the
campaign with nearly invisible name- recognition in the polls, came
from behind to defeat Attorney General Earl Faircloth in the
Democratic runoff.
Faircloth could not have beaten
Kirk. Askew did, and made it look easy, in large part because voters
perceived him as a fresh new face. The runoff had made it possible
for Democrats to nominate their most attractive candidate. Had there
been no runoff, Askew said, he would not have entered the
race.
Florida's election supervisors, who
have wanted for years to be rid of the runoff primary, complained
that they couldn't conduct three elections in nine weeks without
doing injustice to absentee voters overseas. So the tail has wagged
the dog, and they'll get their wish.
The Senate did not agree to this
without considerable anxiety being expressed by Republicans as well
as Democrats. Sen. Bill Posey, R-Rockledge, whose committee wrote
the bill, said he would prefer to keep the runoff. But the first
primary would have to be in August instead of the day after Labor
Day "if we're to have risk-free elections," he said, and he hadn't
found any senator who was keen on that.
There weren't any on the Senate
floor that day either. Their comfort and/or convenience was
apparently more important than preserving an election system that
has been responsible for Florida's best
governors.
To imagine Florida had LeRoy Collins
lost to acting-Gov. Charley Johns in 1954, think
Mississippi.
Posey had a point when he assured
colleagues they had little to fear from angry voters "if they are
the only ones who turn out for the runoff." Runoff turnout has
indeed been dismal, running as low as 7 percent when there was no
exciting statewide race to spark interest.
But that overlooks the underlying
reason. First, some history:
Though turnout in the runoffs has
averaged only 22 percent since 1970, the average was twice as high
in the eight statewide runoffs from 1954 through 1970. More people
voted in five of those runoffs than had voted in the first
primaries. Since 1968, however, that has happened only twice. As a
matter of fact, turnout in the first primaries has been down
markedly since 1970. Before then, it averaged 53.5 percent. From
1970 since, it has averaged only 31.5 percent.
So something more than the runoff
must be to blame for its poor turnouts.
That something, argues former
Secretary of State Jim Smith, was the well-intentioned decision to
move the first primary from May to September.
He is right. The September primary
took effect in 1970. The turnout that year, despite spirited
gubernatorial races in both parties, dropped 20 percent from 1966,
when 56 of every 100 eligible voters had
voted.
In that first September election,
four Democrats spent a sweaty summer competing for the right to take
on incumbent Claude R. Kirk Jr., the first Republican governor since
Reconstruction, whose antics and power grabs had split his own
party. State Sen. Reubin Askew of Pensacola, who had begun the
campaign with nearly invisible name- recognition in the polls, came
from behind to defeat Attorney General Earl Faircloth in the
Democratic runoff.
Faircloth could not have beaten
Kirk. Askew did, and made it look easy, in large part because voters
perceived him as a fresh new face. The runoff had made it possible
for Democrats to nominate their most attractive candidate. Had there
been no runoff, Askew said, he would not have entered the
race.
The Republicans, who have no such
history to enamor them of the runoff, have potentially as much to
lose from scrapping it. The danger to both parties is twofold: that
their nominees will be chosen with a third or less of the vote,
carrying no enthusiasm into the general election, and that left-wing
Democrats and right-wing Republicans may exploit the
opportunity.
This is somewhat less of a risk for
the Republicans, who have a strong party machinery to discourage
upstarts. The Republican brass would even do away with primaries, if
they could. It is a discipline taught by their long years out of
power. The Democrats - in whose regard the political scientist V.O.
Key Jr. famously described Florida politics as "every man for
himself" - never needed a party boss. Now they do, but no one in
their formal party structure fits the description. The task falls by
default to the U.S. senators, Bob Graham and Bill Nelson. The party
can afford to have at most three Democrats, not six, run for
governor next year if it doesn't want to face the general election
with a nonconsensus candidate.
All these problems could be
afforded, while still saving all the money that the runoff costs, if
Florida provided second-choice voting on the first primary ballot.
It couldn't be done with punch-card ballots, but they're soon to be
history, too. Every other method makes the instant runoff feasible
now. All that's lacking in Tallahassee is the
interest.
It's
painful to recall that the September primary was a "reform."
Campaigns would cost less if they were shorter. It was another
paving brick on the road to hell. |