gop attempt to game the foley vote fails
"Judge rules against poll signs in Foley's district
BY MARC CAPUTO
mcaputo@MiamiHerald.com
TALLAHASSEE -
A judge has blocked elections officials from posting election-day signs at polling stations that would have informed people that a vote for Republican Mark Foley would be a vote for his replacement, state Rep. Joe Negron.
Leon County Circuit Judge Janet E. Ferris said posting the signs could have led officials down a ''slippery slope'' that could raise questions about the fairness of posting the notices, which would have benefited Negron. Instead of his name, Foley's will still appear on the Nov. 7 ballot due to a quirk in Florida-election law.
The Florida Secretary of State's office, which runs elections, plans to appeal, said spokesman Sterling Ivey. The office, under the control of Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, was sued by the Florida Democratic Party after it and the eight supervisors in the congressional District 16 considered informing voters that Negron will receive votes for Foley.
Judge Ferris was concerned, though, that ruling in the defendants' favor would allow poll workers to discuss the intent of ballot language, rather than simply explain the mechanics of how to cast a vote on, say, a touch-screen or optical-scan voting machine.
''If a constitutional amendment is confusing or obtuse, could a clarifying notice assist voters? Certainly. Is such notice permissible? The Legislature has enacted not law suggesting it would be,'' Ferris wrote in her ruling that also noted: ``Florida has the dubious honor of having its election laws scrutinized and debated regularly in our courts.''
Earlier in the day, she said the signs themselves would essentially change the ballots in front of voters.
''Our Legislature very clearly said our ballots shall not be changed,'' the judge said. ``I'm not at liberty to engraft any words in the statutes. . . . That would be an activist judge position, and I'm not going to go there.''
But lawyers for Negron and Gov. Jeb Bush's elections office said the notices would not change the ballot. It would just inform voters of how their vote will count and will help blunt administrative problems that could crop up from confused voters in the district, the heart of which is in Palm Beach County -- ground zero in the 2000 election fiasco.
''With all due respect, one of the counties is the butterfly ballot county that couldn't quite handle that,'' said Ron Labasky, attorney for the bipartisan group of supervisors overseeing the election.
'From experience, we know our poll workers are going to be presented with this question of, `You've given me the wrong ballot. This Foley guy is not on the ballot. Where is this other fellow that I've heard about?' ''
Labasky said the elections supervisors just want a nonpartisan way to resolve the issue. The notice, after all, would also say a vote for Democrat Tim Mahoney is a vote for Mahoney and a vote for the No Party Affiliation candidate Emmie Ross is a vote for Ross.
But Mark Herron, the lawyer for the Florida Democratic Party, which brought the suit, said the notice is partisan because it is designed solely for the benefit of Negron, whose primary campaign message is that a vote for Foley is really a vote for him. Herron said state law prohibits ''electioneering'' within 100 feet of a polling station.
The defense denied the notices were political advertisements. And Negron's lawyer, Robert Fernandez, questioned the Democrats' motives, noting that the party didn't protest in 2004 when Broward County's elections supervisor posted similar notices to inform voters that a vote for withdrawn congressional candidate Jim Stork was really a vote for his last-minute stand-in, Robin Rorapaugh.
In that case, though, Bush's secretary of state's office tried to keep Rorapaugh from getting any votes and fought the case to the state Supreme Court, leading to the 2005 election-law changes in the state Legislature, where Negron was a member." |
