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.
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.