Nearly half of the county’s 118,000 registered voters will have no say in the Aug. 20 election of our sheriff and District 5 county commissioner – because they’ve been shut out by write-in candidates who can’t be taken seriously and have no chance to win.
That’s not OK.
No one here should be OK with their fellow citizens being prevented from exercising their right to participate in the process of choosing who governs them, merely because they aren’t registered Republicans.
It’s shameful.
It’s also un-American, especially when those 58,000 disenfranchised voters almost certainly would impact, and likely alter, the outcomes in an election that will determine who occupies two of the most important local offices in our community.
But it’s legal.
It’s legal because this month’s election is, technically, a Republican primary, even though the winners of those two races – for sheriff and District 5 county commissioner – are assured victory in November.
It’s legal also because, as a closed-primary state, Florida allows only voters registered as members of a particular political party to participate in partisan primaries.
That’s understandable, given that political parties don’t want outsiders infecting their primary process.
Besides, the applicable state law includes an exception: If all candidates in the race share the same party affiliation, and the primary winner will not face any opposition in the general election, then the primary must be declared open to all registered voters in the county.
Write-in candidates, however, provide the general-election opposition that closes such primaries.
That loophole is problematic – because it makes the law vulnerable to the abuses seen almost annually in races throughout the state, where candidates who benefit from closed primaries surreptitiously entice political allies to file write-in paperwork with their county’s Supervisor of Elections offices.
There’s no way to know if any local candidate employed this underhanded tactic in the ongoing campaign, but the consequence for voters not registered as Republicans is the same.
It doesn’t matter that the write-in candidates’ names won’t be on the Nov. 5 ballot, or that they weren’t required to pay a filing fee or collect signatures on a petition to qualify.
It doesn’t matter that Deborah Cooney, running as a write-in candidate for sheriff, has already said publicly she would not enforce laws she believes are unconstitutional, calling into question her ability to take the oath of office.
It doesn’t matter that Keith Ridings has admitted he filed to run as a write-in candidate in the District 5 County Commission race solely to close the primary, because, as a conservative Republican, he doesn’t want to “dilute the vote with Democrats and independents.”
Nor does it seem to matter that Ridings doesn’t live in the district, which includes most of the barrier island.
What matters is that Ridings was able to accomplish his morally corrupt mission to deprive non-Republican voters from participating in an election that will determine whether incumbent Laura Moss retains her seat on the commission’s dais or relinquishes it to Vero Beach City Council member Tracey Zudans.
And, as last week came to a close, he appears to have done so without a single complaint being filed with state election authorities.
For what it’s worth: Ridings said he probably would vote for Zudans, but he rejected any suggestion that someone induced him to run.
As for Cooney, who has no law-enforcement experience, the thrust of her campaign continues to be wild and unsubstantiated allegations of criminal misconduct by the Sheriff’s Office, just as it was when she ran as a no-party-affiliation candidate four years ago.
But there’s no cause to suspect she’s a political plant: In June, Cooney offered to withdraw from the race and endorse Fellsmere Police Chief Keith Touchberry, who is running against incumbent Eric Flowers and former Sheriff’s Captain Milo Thornton.
Touchberry didn’t respond, and she later rescinded her offer.
Still, Cooney’s presence in a race she cannot win removes any possibility of the election’s victor claiming the community has spoken – even if the margin of victory is significant – because the outcome will not reflect the will of nearly 49 percent of the county’s registered voters.
It’s ridiculous, really, that more than 1,200 registered voters were forced to temporarily change their party affiliation to Republican before the state’s July 22 deadline, simply to have a voice in the races for sheriff and the District 5 commission seat.
Among those voters were more than 500 Democrats, who deemed those local races to be so crucial to our community that they surrendered their chance to vote in their own party’s primaries.
Angela Weber, vice chair of operations for the Democrats of Indian River, said her group “did not actively encourage anyone to change their registration,” leaving the decision to its members.
More than 600 no-party-affiliation voters also made the switch, presumably for the same reason as local Democrats.
Swan said the number of county voters who changed their party affiliations this year was higher than normal, attributing the increase to a recent surge in media attention on the issue.
It wasn’t surprising, then, that more than 60 percent of the changes occurred after July 1.
But more attention is needed.
There’s no justifiable reason for this state to continue to close primary elections because of write-in candidates who have no realistic chance to win and, in many cases, no interest in trying.
Not only is the state’s write-in law ill-conceived and flawed, but it serves no worthwhile purpose and too often is perverted by unscrupulous politicians who, in pursuit of electoral victory, knowingly conspire to shut out voters.
We must demand a change.
Can you imagine the outrage if voters of only one party were allowed to vote on the constitutional amendments we’ll see on the statewide ballot in November – particularly those pertaining to abortion rights and the legalization of marijuana?
Shouldn’t all registered voters in this county have a similar say in the election of their sheriff and county commissioners?
What about school board elections?
They’re currently nonpartisan – as they should be – but your November ballot will also include a proposed constitutional amendment to make them partisan, starting in 2026.
If that ballot initiative is approved, you can be sure we’ll see write-in candidates closing primaries in our school board races, too, especially with the sickening politicization of public education on the rise.
That would be particularly damaging here, where the current board majority represents only a small minority of the parents who have children in our public schools.
But it would be legal.
And that’s not OK.
