Florida still magnet for electoral mayhem
Post-2000 changes not enough in divided state
WASHINGTON – Florida, the state that gave America Bush v. Gore 18 years ago, is at it again.
Three statewide races – including governor and senator – are still up in the air a week after Election Day. Florida remains not just the swingiest of states but one continuously beset by election glitches. Or so it seems.
In 2000, it was hanging chads and butterfly ballots.
This year, it’s accusations of destroyed votes and recount deadlines that may be impossible to meet. At the center are Palm Beach and Broward counties – again – just like it was nearly two decades ago when the presidential election eventually was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
As of Monday afternoon, hundreds of thousands of ballots in both counties were being recounted in three whisker-thin races: governor (Democrat Andrew Gillum versus Republican
Ron DeSantis); U.S. Senate (Democrat Bill Nelson versus Republican Rick Scott) and state agriculture secretary (Democrat Nikki Fried versus Republican Matt Caldwell). The deadline for finishing is 3 p.m. Thursday.
Lawsuits have been filed. Countersuits have been filed. President Donald Trump has weighed in, tweeting that fellow Republicans Scott and DeSantis need to be declared winners because “an honest vote count is no longer possible-ballots massively infected.”
There’s no reason to think 2020 – another pivotal presidential contest in which Trump will be on the ballot – will be any different, said Keith Fitzgerald, a political science professor at the New College of Florida in Sarasota.
“Florida perfectly reflects the conflict emerging from economic and social change in the United States. It just happens to be mathematically balanced. So it makes our elections dramatic. They’re partisan, and they’re really competitive,” said Fitzgerald, a former state Democratic lawmaker who worked for the Gillum campaign. “And the potential of a replay of this (in 2020) is high.”
After weeks of high-stakes drama and court battles in 2000, George W. Bush was declared the winner of Florida by 537 votes – giving him enough electoral votes to become the nation’s 43rd president.
The following year, the Florida Legislature standardized its voting process by mandating that all 67 counties use optical scanning machines that provided a paper trail. No more hanging or dimpled or slightly perforated chads to decipher.
The law created early voting and made it easier for Floridians to vote by absentee ballot. Voters who made a mistake on their ballot through a technical flaw – such as voting for more than one candidate for the same office – were allowed to submit a corrected ballot on the spot. Recounts became automatic if the difference between two candidates was no more than half a percentage point.
Republican Rep. Bill Posey, then a freshman state senator from Brevard County who chaired the effort, noted the measure passed with broad biparti-
“It’s the same people having the problems. You get bad actors, they can cause bad things to happen.” Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., who led efforts to change election rules as state senator
san support even though some of his fellow GOP lawmakers grumbled the changes would help Democrats more where problems with ballots were more prevalent.
“Our elections are bulletproof,” Posey said in an interview Monday. “Except for gross incompetence or intentional fraud at the highest levels, there is no other reason for every voter in Florida not to feel their vote was counted.”
Those changes in state law were supposed to make the election recounts easier. But those same changes led to an increase in early voting and mail-in ballots that take a long time to verify, making it harder for Broward and Palm Beach to retabulate the votes.
Posey said everybody knew the rules long before this election took place.
“Nobody in Baker County’s having a problem. Pinellas County’s not having problems. Orange County’s not having problems. It’s the same people having the problems,” he said. “You get bad actors, they can cause bad things to happen.” Florida elections had issues even before 2018 rolled around.
In 2011, Scott, as governor, signed a bill passed by the GOP Legislature that, among its changes, shortened early voting. The move disproportionately affected minority voters and was reversed after the 2012 election following criticism from civil rights groups.
Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida, agrees with Posey that the state boasts one of the nation’s most comprehensive election processes.
But it’s not insulated from human error or the polarizing nature of Florida’s evenly split electorate, which magnifies the impact of mistakes or confusion that would be surmountable in many other states, he said. Despite major strides since Bush v. Gore, Florida remains the bloodiest battleground heading into 2020, he said.
“After 18 years and a population growth of 5 to 6 million, we’re still evenly divided, perhaps more evenly divided,” Jewett said. “That feeds into everything else: We’re huge to presidential elections, to control of the Senate, to control of the House. I suspect we will be just as tightly divided in two years, so the possibility of very close elections are quite high, if you ask me.”