Never underestimate the willingness of Florida's governments to fight against its own citizens' wishes. Take the case of a paper-ballot referendum in Sarasota County.
The Sarasota County Commission and the Florida Secretary of State's Office teamed up against the Sarasota Association for Fair Elections in its efforts to put paper ballots on the ballot. They sued the citizens group and brought three lawyers to the table to fight the battle.
They lost.
Sarasota voters will now have a chance on Nov. 7 to decide if they want to force their government to provide a paper ballot trail and spot-check audits in elections. And SAFE can thank, in part, another citizens movement in St. Pete Beach for helping it out.
In turn, the court decision in Sarasota County could spread to other Florida counties where strong paper-ballot advocacy groups exist.
Here's how it all happened:
SAFE gathered more than 14,000 signatures earlier this year to force county government to let voters decide the issue of switching from touch-screen machines to some kind of paper-trail technology. That should have forced county commissioners, under their charter, automatically to put the issue on the ballot. But commissioners balked; they quickly sued to stop the referendum and claimed that it conflicted with state elections law and the Sarasota County charter.
Two weeks ago, Circuit Judge Robert B. Bennett Jr. said no, it didn't.
I won't go into the legal arguments; you can find them online at www.safevote.org anyway if you are inclined to get into such details. But Bennett's ruling cited another pro-referendum group's lawsuit, that of Citizens for Responsible Growth in St. Pete Beach who are fighting to gain control over redevelopment in that city.
The Sarasota ruling could, in turn, spread the paper-ballot referendum movement back this way. Pinellas elections reformers, for starters, are considering such a move, although it would take four times as many signatures to get on the ballot here.
Phyllis vs. the Swifties' consultant: Congressional District 9 candidate Phyllis Busansky was in preemptive strike mode last week against what she believes will be a nasty ad campaign coming from her opponent, Gus Bilirakis, who has hired the same firm that did the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads in 2004.
Busansky's Democratic campaign sent out an e-mail warning supporters about Bilirakis' hiring of the Stevens Reed consulting firm:
"STOP THE LIES — ENABLE PHYLLIS TO FIGHT BACK
"Gus Bilirakis, aka PHANTOM MAN, has decided to use a ruthless, deceitful media firm to produce and run his vicious negative campaign against Phyllis Busansky.
"The Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm Firm created the Swift Boat Veterans ad campaign to distort John Kerry's heroic record of service. "Can you [imagine] knowingly hiring a firm that is known to use 9-11 as a political instrument and distort the truth by doctoring photos? KNOWINGLY!"
Tampa Bay's 10 reporter Mike Deeson thought he had a pretty good scoop: At a time when city of Tampa employees were getting raises around 3 percent, Mayor Pam Iorio's political guru Fran Davin was slated for a whopping 17 percent hike for her part-time special assistant job.
Deeson — who skewered Davin earlier this year for staying on the job years longer than she promised and making more than $77,000 a year for a three-day-a-week job — dutifully started putting together a story package for the evening newscast. He got a city employee on camera suitably outraged by the inequity between rank-and-file raises and Davin's. But when he called for comment from Iorio's spokeswoman, he got a call back from the mayor herself. The $93,194 salary listed for Davin in this year's published budget was a typo, Deeson said he was told by the mayor. Davin will be getting a 3 percent increase.
For the record, I'm not suggesting it was anything but an honest error. Honest.
Political Whore worked in Phyllis Busansky's 1996 congressional campaign.
This article appears in Sep 27 – Oct 4, 2006.
