Ernst: Florida voters deserve open primaries

Sarasota Republican Party chairman Joe Gruters calls open primaries "a little like not having a pitcher on your baseball team, so you get to pick from your opponent's lineup." (Herald-Tribune archive)

Published: Tuesday, June 12, 2012 at 2:56 p.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, June 12, 2012 at 2:56 p.m.

In referring to open primaries, Joe Gruters, chairman of the Republican Party in Sarasota County, calls it "a little like not having a pitcher on your baseball team, so you get to pick from your opponent's lineup."

The sports-image sound bite may play well before the home crowd, but it hardly camouflages the cynical game Gruters and the Republicans have played in the upcoming elections.

First, a bit of history. In 1998, 64 percent of Florida's voters passed a constitutional amendment in favor of open primaries. The accompanying text of the Constitutional Revision Commission stated, "If all candidates for an office have the same party affiliation and the winner will have no opposition in the general election, all qualified electors, regardless of party affiliation, may vote in the primary elections for that office."

Before the amendment passed, given the historic poor turnout of closed primaries — say 25 percent or less in some cases — a candidate supported by fewer than 10 percent of the overall electorate could end up in office. Opening primaries helps ensure a broader spectrum of support for officeholders, leading to more effective, more legitimized governance.

The voters realized that in 1998, but since then, the political parties have made a mockery of the open primary system through the use of write-in candidates.

The names of write-ins do not actually appear anywhere. They do not have to advertise, or pay to run, or collect signatures. And even though they have no chance of winning and generally do not win more than 1 percent of the vote, they satisfy the law's definition of "opposition" in the general election.

So, whenever a political party wants to close a primary, it enlists a ghost write-in "candidate," and presto, more than half the electorate is immediately cut off from voting.

It just happened in the race for Sarasota County supervisor of elections. No Democrats filed to run, so up popped Victoria Ann Brill, daughter of the Republican Party's finance chairman, who filed as a write-in. It's the last we'll ever hear of her. About 120,000 Republicans will get to choose between Jon Thaxton and incumbent Kathy Dent. Nearly 150,000 Democrats, independents and members of minor parties will have no say in who wins the seat.

No objective observer would call this the optimum method of putting the best person in office. Going with Gruters' baseball analogy, when one side has a pitcher and the other doesn't, it's not a game; it's a scrimmage. And when it's over, the eventual winner will have done little to establish credibility.

It's also funny that the political parties would draw the distinctions they do for primaries. Ann Spencer of Sarasota raised the point in a letter to the editor published Tuesday with the heading, "Party switcheroo."

She noted how easy it is to switch from one party to another. And it is. They'll accept anyone, no questions asked. Taking it to the extreme, all 150,000 ostracized voters could theoretically switch parties before July 16 and vote in the supervisor's race. Would that be OK with the local GOP? After all, RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only, are still Republicans.

Really now. If anyone can be a Republican, or a Democrat, at the drop of a hat, why not allow everyone to vote in those special cases where the two-party system has not functioned as designed? That's what the voters demanded in 1998.

Unfortunately, partisan diehards have exploited the letter of the law to frustrate its intent. The transparency of their actions and motives does nothing more than fuel the alienation that already afflicts the political process.

The sports team analogy just doesn't work. An athletic contest has a final score, and that's the end of it. Elections keep score, too, but the most important part is what comes afterward. In electing our candidates, we strive for a government that represents what a majority of the people want. We're not going to achieve it by disenfranchising a majority of the voters eligible, and willing, to help make those choices.



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