Across South Florida, devious DeSantis disenfranchises voters

For nearly three months, Gov. Ron DeSantis has silenced the voices of hundreds of thousands of people who live in Broward and Palm Beach counties. He stubbornly refuses to hold special elections to fill three vacancies in the state Legislature at a time when political power is being redistributed through redistricting.

DeSantis should stop playing this devious political game and do his job. But it might take the intervention of a judge to compel him to carry out his fundamental duty as governor and protect the constitutional right of Floridians to be represented in Tallahassee.

Every day DeSantis refuses to schedule elections, he disenfranchises voters and flagrantly abuses his authority as the leader of all Floridians. It’s politically motivated, because the soon-to-be vacated legislative seats are held by Democrats in two counties that and don’t support him. It’s racially motivated because the seats are held by Black officeholders. That’s no coincidence.

All three seats are in predominantly Black districts and held by Black Democrats: Sen. Perry Thurston of Lauderhill, Rep. Bobby DuBose of Fort Lauderdale and Rep. Omari Hardy of West Palm Beach.

All three are seeking the seat in Congress that was vacated by the death of U.S. Rep.

Alcee Hastings. Under Florida’s resign-torun law, they must resign their offices, but can legally post-date a resignation as late as the day before they would be elected to Congress.

That date, chosen by DeSantis, is Jan.

11, 2022, which is the first day of the next legislative session, when decisions affecting Floridians will be made in chambers with three empty seats. Those deserted desks are symbols of DeSantis’ incompetence. His deviousness deprives the residents of Senate District 33, House District 94 and House District 88 of their voice in Tallahassee.

Black Floridians have suffered too long and fought too hard to be denied a voice in government.

If Florida had a governor who cared about his constituents, DeSantis would have set the special election dates for the legislative seats to be the same as for Hastings’ seat. But it’s too late for that now. That would have saved money, generated greater interest in an off-year election and protected residents from gaps in representation, but it would not advance DeSantis’ agenda to further marginalize Democrats and people of color.

Would DeSantis treat Republican voters this shabbily? No.

When Republican Tom Lee resigned his Tampa-area Senate seat on May 29, 2020, DeSantis called a special election just two days later in Republican-leaning Senate District 20 in Hillsborough and Pasco counties. That’s a very important seat to Republicans.

Would DeSantis disenfranchise white Democrats this badly? No.

In Broward, Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz resigned in the middle of a term to be DeSantis’ chief of emergency management in 2019. The governor played the same petty political game for too long, but after a seven-week delay, he called an election. Northwest Broward voters chose Democrat Dan Daley as Moskowitz’s replacement.

A new lawsuit, filed in state court in Tallahassee, would force DeSantis to call special elections for the three legislative vacancies. The law says a governor “shall fix the dates” of a special election, but doesn’t specify when. The 2022 Legislature should close this loophole by requiring a governor to call an election within 10 days of any resign-to-run vacancy. As the lawsuit notes, DeSantis and three predecessors took an average of 7.6 days to call 65 special elections between 1999 and 2020.

When DeSantis wants to, he moves with tremendous speed as he did Thursday by calling for a special legislative session to ram through a law prohibiting vaccine mandates, setting up another clash with the Biden administration.

Compounding DeSantis’ refusal to call an election is his silence. He doesn’t have enough respect for Floridians to even explain his decision. His office ignored two requests by the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board to explain why. One of our questions: Will DeSantis leave them vacant until the next general election next November? That would be even worse.

This is beyond taxation without representation. For the leader of the third-largest state to arrogantly deprive constituents of a voice in their political destiny is dangerous. DeSantis claims to be an advocate for excellence in civics education. Really? Let’s start by teaching students about this colossal failure of government leadership in Florida.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.