If we’ve learned anything about elections in Florida, it’s that some factors are simply beyond a candidate’s control.
It might rain cats and dogs on election day, prompting voters to stay home. Inattentive voters can mistakenly choose the wrong candidate. The layout of the ballot itself can prompt some voters to miss it and skip it.
The most haunting case in Florida history is the “butterfly ballot” in Palm Beach County in the 2000 presidential election, in which a misaligned design led an unusually high number of people to vote for Pat Buchanan for president on their punch-card ballots instead of Al Gore, who lost by 537 votes.
In an effort to avoid these problems, county election supervisors circulate a draft sample ballot, first to candidates and party leaders and then to all voters by mail. The sample ballot needs to reach voters soon, because the real thing, the vote-by-mail ballots, will be sent out the week of July 11-18.
The deadline was Thursday to send comments about the sample ballot to Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott. “If we do not hear from you by then, we will assume there are no objections to the ballot format as drafted,” Scott said in a memorandum.
A sample ballot familiarizes voters with the names of candidates and who’s running for what. But it won’t mean much if voters don’t bother to look at it.
In the upcoming primary election on Aug. 20, there are dozens and dozens of ballot layout combinations in Broward alone, one of several counties where ballots also must be in three languages: English, Spanish and Creole.
Some closed primaries are open to Democrats only, others are open to Republicans only, and still others are open to all voters.
Some contests, such as for Congress and the state Legislature, are open only to party voters in specific districts, unless only one party fields candidates in that race. All voters, regardless of party, can vote in School Board and judicial races.
In the coming weeks, as we publish candidate endorsements, we will also remind readers which candidates are running in which districts.
Every voter has an information card that lists their district numbers for Congress, Legislature, County Commission and School Board.
If you read or hear about a controversial race and it’s not on your ballot, there’s a reason for that.
We have editorialized in opposition to closed primaries because they disenfranchise too many voters, but when people had a chance to change the system and open all primaries, it fell short of the required 60% threshold.
Contests are listed in specific order, by law. Federal races for U.S. Senate and Congress appear first, then statewide races, legislative elections, county-wide constitutional officers, judges and School Board elections. By law, candidates are listed alphabetically.
Every election has unique characteristics. This will be the first-ever election in Broward for the newly-created office of Tax Collector.
All three candidates, Abbey Ajayi, Dwight Forrest and Perry E. Thurston Jr., are Democrats, and because no Republicans are running, the race is a “universal primary,” meaning all voters can vote regardless of party.
The layout of the ballot matters.
Six years ago, Broward’s confusing layout cost Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson thousands of votes in his close loss to Rick Scott, because that race was at the bottom of a page, listed below a long set of ballot instructions in multiple languages that most people probably ignored.
A study later found that the design cost Nelson 9,658 votes in Broward. He lost by 10,033 votes statewide.
Nobody questioned the layout at the time, but state law was changed to prevent that kind of oddity.
The draft of Broward’s sample ballot lists every candidate in every race in every district, and something caught my eye.
The last race on this primary ballot is a nonpartisan county-wide School Board race, open to all voters, between Debra “Debbi” Hixon and Tom Vasquez.
It’s listed after an unusually long list of five down-ballot races for county judge that some voters may skip because they don’t recognize the candidates.
Hixon holds one of two county-wide School Board seats; seven others are elected from districts. Some voters will also vote in the School Board District 3 race between Sarah Leonardi and Jason Lee Loring.
The Hixon-Vasquez race looks awfully lonely all by itself in a right-hand column on some ballots, and I brought that to the attention of the elections office.
Some voters who vote at the polls are in a hurry. Haste can lead to sloppy or innocent mistakes.
It’s another reason why people like the convenience of voting by mail, because they can take as much time as they want to review their ballots. These choices are too important to not get right.
Steve Bousquet is Opinion Editor of the Sun Sentinel and a columnist in Tallahassee and Fort Lauderdale. Contact him at sbousquet@sunsentinel.com or (*50) 567-2240 and follow him on X @stevebousquet.
