Where We Stand:

Heed voters on nonpartisan elections.

For the past three years, elected officials in Orange County and their lawyers have been waging a battle over the rules for local government and popular representation. The outcome will say a lot about who is ultimately in charge of how the county is run: politicians or the voting public.

A series of landslides

In November 2014, Orange voters gave resounding approval to an amendment to the County Charter to change six elective offices from partisan to nonpartisan and impose 16-year term limits on them. The vote wasn’t even close; 71 percent of those casting ballots supported amending the charter, the document that spells out the structure and powers of the county’s government.

But three of the officeholders — Sheriff Jerry Demings, Property Assessor Rick Singh and Tax Collector Scott Randolph — filed a lawsuit in 2015 using taxpayer dollars in a bid to nullify the 200,000 votes for the amendment. In May 2016, Orange-Osceola Circuit Judge Keith White upheld the term limits but threw out the nonpartisan elections on a technicality, ruling that a 2010 state law pre-empted the county from making the change.

Soon after White issued his decision, Orange County’s Charter Review Commission put two more amendments on the 2016 ballot to give voters another crack at making the six offices nonpartisan and term limited. One amendment spelled out a different approach to the same objectives, changing the offices from constitutional to charter but specifying they would not fall under control of the mayor or county commission. The other declared the 2014 amendment would be revived in the event of a favorable court ruling or action by the Legislature. Both measures passed by landslides.

But again, the same three officeholders went to court to undo the voters’ verdict, persuading another circuit judge to delay the amendments. In October, the 5th District Court of Appeal overrode the delay. However, this month the same appellate court upheld White’s ruling against the 2014 amendment, leaving in doubt the legal status of all six officeholders — and even raising questions about whether nonpartisan elections in the county for mayor and commissioner are still legitimate.

The latest court ruling presents the county and Mayor Teresa Jacobs, who led the push for nonpartisan elections, with a choice: Let stand the appellate court’s questionable ruling overriding the will of county voters, or challenge it in the ways suggested by last year’s second charter amendment, with an appeal to the state Supreme Court or a bid in the Legislature to amend the 2010 law to restore the right of Orange and other charter counties to run their elections. Given what’s at stake — the will of the voters and home rule — both courses would be justified.

Removing a divisive influence

Obviously there are political overtones to this policy dispute. Demings, Singh and Randolph are Democrats. Jacobs, though she holds a nonpartisan office, is a Republican. Registered Democrats enjoy a growing numerical advantage over registered Republicans in Orange County, so a switch to nonpartisan races for the six county offices in question arguably would blunt this edge for Democrats.

However, we supported the 2014 and 2016 amendments for reasons apart from their presumed impact on county races. We think local government operates better free of the distracting and divisive influences of the take-no-prisoners partisan politics that plague Tallahassee and Washington, D.C. And we recognize that with an increasing number of voters choosing to register without party affiliation — now up to 30 percent in Orange County — partisan primaries disenfranchise a significant share of the electorate.

What matters now is not our past positions, but the will of the county voters in favor of the amendments. It’s notable that voters in 2014 also rejected 54-46 a rival amendment backed by Democrats that would have changed the nonpartisan Orange County mayor’s and commissioners’ offices to partisan — leaving no doubt where the will of the electorate lies on this issue.

Orange County voters have clearly decided in favor of nonpartisan local elections. Their decision deserves to be respected, and defended.