Many of them sure would like to have a say in the state's primary elections — but they generally don't. Florida, after all, is a closed-primary state. That means a voter can only vote in a primary election if there is more than one candidate from his or her own party vying for a given seat.
That could change, though, if a proposed amendment to the state's constitution goes all the way.
On Friday, it got its first nod from members of the Constitution Revision Commission, the entity that meets every 20 years to develop constitutional amendments for the state's ballot for the November midterms.
The measure passed the CRC's Ethics and Elections Committee 6-3, and will be up for a vote in the panel's General Provisions Committee before it heads to a full vote.
News Service of Florida's Jim Turner wrote that William Schifino, a Tampa attorney who's a member of that panel, proposed the measure, which would require 60 percent of the voters to approve it — assuming it even makes it onto the ballot.
He had originally proposed a measure that would have let voters without an affiliation weigh in on Republican or Democratic primaries, but he altered it to a "top-two" system, which means the two biggest vote-getters of all candidates in the running, would move onto the general election ballot.
In his reasoning, Schifino cited predictions that third- and non-party voters "will outnumber or at least equal the Ds and Rs," which means policymakers would be obligated to "engage them in the primary voting process."
Proponents of open primaries praised the committee's passage of the measure.
“The voters of Florida support open primaries by a very large margin. But politicians tend to ignore voters when it comes to making democracy more open, fair, and responsive to the people," a coalition of pro-open primaries groups, including Progress for All and Floridians for Fair and Open Primaries said in a joint statement.
They urged other commissioners to get on board.
"It’s a tribute to Commissioner Schifino and the members of the Ethics and Elections Committee that they listened. The movement for open primaries in Florida is just getting started, and we’re going to hold the General Provisions Committee and the full CRC accountable as they begin their deliberations on this critical issue.”
Most open-primary proponents believe that only allowing Republicans or Democrats to determine who goes on into a general election is akin to denying potentially millions of people their right to vote, thereby skewing the outcome in favor of party establishment. In 2016, many third- and non-major party voters wanted to show their support for Bernie Sanders in Florida's primary, and some felt they were denied that ability by design.
Yet even some who supported the proposal's Friday passage were skeptical over whether open primaries would result in a better democracy in Florida, or if they'd do the opposite and promote partisan shenanigans.
Proponents of open primaries have said concerns over Republicans or Democrats trying to rig open primaries against their most electable opponents is "elitist and unproven," and that trying to prevent it from happening at the expense of millions of voters' ability to weigh in on primaries is wrong.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, right? Show me where this happened,” pollster Steve Vancore told CL in 2016. “I almost want to say, ‘So what?’ Voters should be allowed to vote. If people’s concern is voters will come in and vote in a way that I don’t like, well, I’m sorry if you don’t like the way they’re voting, but that should be their constitutionally protected right.”
This article appears in Jan 25 – Feb 1, 2018.