Majorities not needed in Florida primaries

It was a parody of an election, an abbreviated pretense at democracy after the vote totals revealed no clear preference among the eight candidates for Broward State Attorney.

No majority? No matter. The guy who received only a fifth of the primary votes was awarded the nomination.

Of the 206,333 who cast votes in the Democratic primary election for state attorney, 162,603 Broward voters chose someone other than Harold Pryor. But his 21% was enough.

In a county with more than twice as many registered Democrats than Republicans, Pryor is now favored to win in November. Essentially, 43,730 of the county’s 1.2 million registered voters have decided who should succeed retiring State Attorney Mike Satz as head of one of the most consequential offices in the county.

In another weighty county election, a 37% plurality gave the nomination to Gregory Tony, who Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Broward Sheriff after DeSantis ousted Scott Israel last year. Tony’s supporters were apparently unbothered by troubling revelations about the sheriff since his appointment. If a majority of Broward voters felt otherwise about Tony, they were undone by Florida math.

In fact, no candidate for countywide office in the usually decisive Democratic primary received an electoral majority. With no provision for a runoff, Joe Scott won the party nomination for supervisor of elections with less than 25% of the votes. Incumbent Circuit Court Clerk Brenda Forman, dogged by scandal through her first term, led with 45%. Gordon Weekes, who’ll face only a write-in candidate for public defender in the general election, received 48%.

It was plurality gone wild.

The same flawed formula governs state and congressional primaries in Florida. In 2005, legislators jettisoned runoffs, known as “second primaries,” persuaded that jamming another election between the August primary and the November general election was too much to ask of county election supervisors.

Ridding Florida of runoff primaries eliminated the mechanism that had led to the election of three of the state’s most esteemed governors. Bob Graham, Reubin Askew and Lawton Chiles were all runners-up in their respective primaries, then prevailed in runoffs and again in the general elections.

Bob Graham’s daughter, Gwen Graham, similarly finished second in the 2018 primary, with 31% of the Democratic votes, while former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum led the field with 34% of the vote. But under the 2005 law, a plurality gave Gillum the nomination. Perhaps, if there had been a runoff, Democratic voters would have given more consideration to the ethical questions that would dog Gillum in his losing campaign against Republican Ron DeSantis.

Floridapolitics.com reported that two dozen candidates for state and federal offices won their elections in Florida’s August primary with less than half the votes, including two congressional candidates who managed to win respective nominations with 25% and 23%.

Back in 2005, then-state Sen. Steve Geller warned fellow state legislators that ridding Florida of the second primary could allow extremist candidates to snatch party nominations. In August, racist conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer did just that, winning the Republican nomination in the 21st District congressional election with 43% of the vote.

Surely, after a closer examination of Loomer in a runoff campaign, Palm Beach County Republicans voters would have embraced a more moderate candidate.

It’s not just Florida. FairVote, a non-partisan election reform advocacy group, reported that in 2018, “a whopping 117 primary races for federal and state positions resulted in non-majoritarian outcomes.”

We could avoid these undemocratic scenarios without the bother of a runoff. More than 20 cities across the country and the state of Maine have adopted ranked-choice voting systems: in races in which no candidate receives more than 50% of the votes, winners are decided by calculating the second, third, even the fourth choice of voters.

In 2007, 78% of Sarasota’s voters approved a switch to ranked-choice voting, but 13 years later, the Florida Division of Elections still hasn’t approved the necessary voting technology.

Come November, Florida voters can at least inject a bit more democracy into the process. Amendment 3 would create a single primary, open to all candidates and all registered voters. Two candidates with the higher vote totals would be advanced to the general election ballot. Amendment 3 would open primaries to independent and third-party voters — the 30% of the electorate now shut out of the primaries.

Me? I’d go with ranked voting. My other preference, ranked second on my personal ballot, goes to Amendment 3.

Fred Grimm, a longtime resident of Fort Lauderdale, has worked as a journalist in South Florida since 1976. Reach him by email at leogrimm@gmail.com or on Twitter: @grimm_fred.