Editorial Roundup: Florida

South Florida Sun Sentinel. August 25, 2022.

Editorial: DeSantis and Cabinet badly botched FDLE appointment

It’s one of the most important hiring decisions a Florida governor can make, and it happened this week. But nobody noticed (until now), and maybe that was the point.

In what seemed like the blink of an eye — 58 seconds, to be exact — Gov. Ron DeSantis nominated Mark Glass to be permanent executive director of the state’s flagship police agency, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE). This critical state job also requires Cabinet approval.

At a meeting Tuesday, all three elected Cabinet members rubber-stamped this questionable move with no discussion or public job interview, and not even a polite thank you from the appointee in the back of the room. The Cabinet spent more time on a Fire Prevention Week resolution. This public-be-damned charade is one more disturbing lack of transparency, even by the lax standards of the DeSantis administration.

It also might be illegal.

Seven years ago, a different governor, Rick Scott, orchestrated the ouster of an FDLE commissioner, Gerald Bailey, with a complete disregard for the Sunshine Law that applies to the Cabinet. Numerous media organizations, including this newspaper, filed a lawsuit, which led to the adoption of modest reforms intended to prevent any more secrecy and political interference in law enforcement.

It may be debatable whether the 2015 settlement applies to a new group of officials, but it’s wrong that nobody raised a peep — not even Nikki Fried, the agriculture commissioner and lone Democrat on the Cabinet. Maybe if they met more often, they would know what they’re doing.

The earlier case is known as the Weidner settlement, named for an attorney for the plaintiffs. It’s on file in state court in Tallahassee, which still has jurisdiction. The settlement, which is online, applies to the offices of governor and Cabinet, and says:

Prior to any vote by the Governor and/or the Cabinet on an appointment, there must be a public, Sunshine-compliant interview of any candidate to be voted on. This interview could be conducted by the Governor and Cabinet themselves at an open meeting or the Governor and Cabinet could delegate this responsibility to a committee … In the case of appointments made by the Governor and Cabinet collectively, multiple candidates could be publicly interviewed. Principals would be free to conduct independent interviews in addition to the public interview contemplated here.

This is no bureaucratic technicality. It’s at the heart of everything wrong with a state government that operates in the shadows.

Jeffrey Mark Glass, 52, was the hand-picked choice by DeSantis in May for this $150,000-a-year job. He replaces Rick Swearingen, Bailey’s successor, who was allowed to retire after a 38-year career at the agency, with no real explanation for his departure.

Glass, a former director of the Capitol Police, was named the acting commissioner in May. No one else was seriously considered. An unknown FDLE employee or employees sent an unsigned letter to Cabinet members, warning that Glass would be a “yes man” for DeSantis and that his appointment would cause low morale.

It’s a fair question worthy of public discussion. Why Glass? Why now, in the midst of DeSantis’s re-election campaign? The governor couldn’t offer a single coherent reason.

“In less than four months, he’s been able to do a lot to help with a lot of different issues that the state is facing,” DeSantis said of Glass.

Really? Name one, Governor.

Sun Sentinel sources say DeSantis lost patience with FDLE’s unwillingness to target illegal immigration more aggressively. That’s a key part of DeSantis’ political agenda, but it’s not part of FDLE’s mission. The commissioner must safeguard the agency’s integrity and independence, even if — especially if — it means pushing back against political meddling from the governor’s office. FDLE is not DeSantis’ plaything.

We asked the offices of DeSantis and Attorney General Ashley Moody, who oversees compliance with the Sunshine Law, why they didn’t comply with the settlement terms in appointing Glass. Neither responded to our questions.

The news outlets that sued Scott and the former Cabinet included The Associated Press; Florida Society of Newspaper Editors; Gannett Co.; Miami Herald Media Company; Morris Communications; Palm Beach Newspapers, LLC; Scripps Media, LLC; and Times Publishing Company. Media groups should challenge this vote and force DeSantis and the Cabinet to live by the terms of the Weidner settlement.

It won’t change the outcome. But it would strike a blow for transparency, and Florida surely could use a lot more of that.

Tampa Bay Times. August 25, 2022.

Editorial: Floridians should get to vote for ranked choice voting

The system would cut down on hostile campaigns and produce more candidates with broader appeal.

Do you long for less polarizing elections? Do you think the two major parties have too much influence? Do gerrymandered districts make you cringe? Are you an independent voter who feels shut out of the process? Hard to blame you. But there is an answer: ranked choice voting.

Right now, Florida voters cast a ballot for one candidate in each race. In primary elections, including those for Congress and the state Legislature, the winner often doesn’t get a majority of the votes. In Tuesday’s election, for instance, Republican Laurel Lee won her party’s primary in U.S. House District 15 with 41% of the vote. Alan Cohn only captured 1 out of every 3 votes in winning the Democratic race in the same district. That’s not to pick on Lee and Cohn. But in each of their primaries, a majority of voters wanted someone else. And yet they are the only two choices voters will have in November’s general election. It shows how candidates don’t need to cater to the majority of voters to win races.

With a few exceptions, only voters registered as Republicans or Democrats get to vote in their party’s primaries. The closed system effectively shuts out 29% of Florida’s electorate — third party and independent voters — from many of the most important primary races. Yes, the 3.9 million voters registered as No Party Affiliation in Florida could join the Democrats or Republicans, but many of them don’t want to support the two-party duopoly, and who could criticize them given the polarization within the current system? After all, none other than President George Washington cautioned the nation about dividing into political parties and the likelihood that they would allow “unprincipled men” to “subvert the power of the people and usurp for themselves the reins of government.”

Ranked choice voting — sometimes called instant runoff voting ― comes in many forms. The basic idea is that voters don’t have to select only their top candidate — they can rank some or all of the candidates if they want. Either way, if no candidate receives a majority of the first-place votes on the initial tally, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated. When a voter’s first choice vote is eliminated, then their second choice vote is counted. This keeps happening until a candidate gets a majority of the votes and wins the election. The process is similar to a traditional runoff election, but it happens quickly. With the help of the right technology, counting multiple rounds can be done rapidly, hence “instant runoff.”

Ranked choice voting would also help:

— Elect candidates with broader appeal. Any politician who hopes to win must convince enough voters to rank them first, but in many cases they’ll also need second- and third-place voters. Instead of scorched earth campaigning, they have to listen to their opponents’ constituents if they want to capture those second- and third-place votes. Once in office, winning candidates who want to be reelected would have a greater incentive to reflect the ideas and values of more of their constituents, not just those of their hardcore supporters.

— Support majority rule. A majority of voters — instead of a plurality, in many cases — will have helped elect their representative, even if the candidate was not their first choice. (It’s technically possible for a ranked choice election to end with the winner not reaching 50 percent, but it hasn’t happened often.)

— Create more choices from across the political spectrum. In the current system, Democrats and Republicans dominate partisan elections. In fact, candidates from outside of the two major parties are often described as spoilers. The oft-cited example is the Green Party’s Ralph Nader siphoning enough votes from Democrat Al Gore to help Republican George W. Bush win the 2020 presidential election. In the ranked choice system, voters can make an independent or small party candidate their first choice without fear of wasting their vote or swinging the advantage to a candidate they don’t like. They vote knowing that the system automatically considers their second choice if their first choice is eliminated.

Ranked choice voting can be used to select a single winning candidate from a district, much like we do now, or select multiple winners, in a system sometimes called proportional ranked choice voting. The proportional system mitigates winner-take-all elections. The majority still wins most of the seats in a multi-seat district, but any group with enough voters can elect winners in proportion to its share of the votes. Think of it this way: In a strong Democratic district with only one seat, Republicans are often shut out entirely. The proportional system, with its multiple winners in each district, ensures a better chance of at least one Republican candidate being elected in Democratic leaning districts — and vice versa. More voters would feel as if their vote mattered, especially in places dominated by one of the two major parties. Another…