Fla. governor to appeal two vote rulings

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida’s Republican governor filed an appeal in a bid to lift a federal judge’s temporary order letting some felons regain voting rights despite failing to settle unpaid fines and other debts.

Gov. Ron DeSantis also said Friday he would appeal a ruling handed down by another federal judge who sided with Democrats on the seemingly trivial matter of name order on ballots.

On that issue, Judge Mark Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida found it a significant matter.

In his Friday ruling, Walker agreed that a candidate whose name appears first has an undue advantage. Noting Florida’s history of close elections, he said that “systematically allocating that small but statistically significant advantage” would be constitutionally unfair.

Under current law, President Donald Trump would automatically appear at the top of the ballot, regardless of his eventual Democratic challenger in 2020.

That’s because top ballot billing goes to the party of the state’s governor. Republicans have occupied the Florida governor’s office for two decades.

On an arguably more thorny matter, the governor’s office said it would appeal another judge’s ruling on Amendment 4, last year’s voter-approved measure that returned voting rights to Florida’s 1.4 million felons who are no longer in custody.

At question is whether the payment of fines and other fees is required before a sentence can be deemed complete, as the Republican-controlled Legislature asserted in a bill later signed by DeSantis.

Last month, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle ruled that the state must give back voting rights to the felons who challenged the state law until the legal merits of the legislation can be fully adjudicated.