Playing politics with the ballot

It dawned the other day that the Legislature is monkeying with our voting rights, and it’s best you hear about it.

Two bills are in the current Session to discuss, and one approved last year that is on our 2024 ballot to vote up or down. Let’s jump into that one first.

— Voters will be asked to decide whether School Board races should be partisan or remain nonpartisan.

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They used to be partisan until voters decided politics has no role in deciding what’s best for children, and the School Board became nonpartisan. That was at least 20 years ago.

It became an issue in Citrus County in 2020 when a candidate for School Board was upset that the Chronicle wouldn’t identify her as a Republican. We explained over and over — it’s a nonpartisan race! The whole idea of “nonpartisan” is to remove the D and R from behind someone’s name. 

This candidate lost to the incumbent, who happened to be a registered Democrat. We never got into that either because, um, it’s NONPARTISAN. No more than we’d ask a judicial candidate his/her political affiliation. Or someone running for the Mosquito Control Board. All nonpartisan elected positions.

They’re still political. Anyone can look up a candidate’s voter registration information. The idea that somehow the School Board floats in a nonpartisan cloud isn’t based on reality. Looks good on paper, but that’s about it.

Plus, the superintendent of schools is a partisan elected position. The superintendent is partisan, but the School Board is not? Someone please explain the logic behind that.

This is a toss-up for me.

— Our state senator, Blaise Ingoglia, has a bill to place term limits on county commissioners. See this for what it is: A political power-play at our expense.

Right now, voters can elect the same county commissioner for as many years as the commissioner wants his/her name on the ballot.

Ingoglia’s bill is an 8-year max, the same term limits for legislators.

Oh, and he also doesn’t want Floridians to vote whether to take away this right. The Legislature will do this for us because, you know, they’re so smart and everything.

Supporters of local term limits will have you believe that county commissions are rife with corruption, where incumbents fueled by well-connected money sail to re-election after re-election. Nothing remotely close happens like that in Citrus County.

Off the top of my head, I count three commissioners in my 36 Citrus County years who made it past two terms: Gary Bartell, Vicki Phillips, and Dennis Damato. Current Commissioner Jeff Kinnard is going for his third. That’s three out of, what, 50 at least. Not exactly an avalanche of career commissioners.

In real life this probably doesn’t do much.

Still, we should oppose the bill on principle alone. Tallahassee strong-arming what’s in our best interest. At the very least, leave it up to each county to decide. As it stands, this is nothing more than a rip-off.

— There’s a move to bring back the runoff election. The runoff was an odd quirk of nature that had the ability to turn elections upside down — which means, of course, I’m totally in favor.

Simple concept: In primaries with more than two candidates, unless the overall winner gets more than 50% of the vote, the top two vote-getters had a runoff in October, with the winner either winning outright, or facing an opponent in November.

I covered this in detail how the runoff sent Helen Spivey to the Capitol over a much more well-known opponent. The runoffs have historically terrible voter turnout, often under 25%, and the Legislature did away with them in 2006.

I checked results in every primary since then and was surprised to find out we would have had numerous County Commission Republican primary runoffs, including:

— 2012, Scott Adams was elected to the County Commission in a four-person primary with 40% of the vote. This is the poster child for runoff elections.

— 2018, Ron Kitchen Jr. won a three-candidate primary with 38%. Finishing second at 30% was Ruthie Davis Schlabach. That would have been a fun runoff.

—2020, running in a different district, Schlabach won a six-candidate primary but would have had a runoff because she finished with 49% of the vote. The second-place finisher had 15%, and it really wasn’t even that close. This is the poster child against a runoff.

Look. I’ve been pretty clear about this, even from my Chronicle days. Don’t mess with elections. Don’t screw around with someone’s vote.

Some things should be sacred.

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