Court: GOP candidates will stay first on Florida ballots

Republicans will be back at the top of ballots in Florida if a federal appeals court ruling holds.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes one of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ former state Supreme Court picks, reversed an earlier ruling that would have ended a decades-old Florida law that listed the governor’s party first on all ballots.

That law was written by Democrats in the 1950s but has been taken advantage of by the Florida GOP for the past 22 years as their gubernatorial candidates keep winning.

In their decision announced Wednesday, the court ruled that the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which included an Orlando voter, the Democratic National Committee and its campaign committees, had no legal standing to prove “injury” because of the law.

The plaintiffs could still appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. The plaintiffs had cited research showing the statistical advantage of being listed first was estimated to be as high as 5.4 percentage points when Republican Party candidates are listed first and 3.92 points when Democrats are on top.

In his November ruling, District Court Judge Mark Walker wrote, “Florida’s ballot order statute is not neutral; instead, it affects Plaintiffs’ rights in a politically discriminatory way. … It is difficult to imagine what other purpose it could possibly serve than as a thumb on the scale in favor of the party in power.”

But in his ruling, Judge Will Pryor wrote of the plaintiffs, “None of them proved an injury in fact.”

“The only voter who offered any evidence at trial was Nancy Jacobson,” Will Pryor wrote.

Jacobson, an Orlando resident, “testified that she ‘always vote[s],’ that she ‘go[es] out of [her] way to vote in every election,’ and that she consistently votes for Democratic candidates. But Jacobson failed to identify any difficulty in voting for her preferred candidate or otherwise participating in the political process.”

And even if they did suffer an injury because of the law, Secretary of State Laurel Lee, named as a defendant in the suit, isn’t the person enforcing it. County supervisors are, and they weren’t sued.