A funny thing happened on the way to printing the ballots for this November's election — Democrat Ed Jany was not taken off the ballot in the CD13 race.
Last week Pinellas Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark issued a press release regarding the failure to omit Jany from the ballot, and said a notice about his withdrawal will be placed in absentee mail ballot kits. Notices will also be placed in early voting sites, and in voting precincts on Election Day.
But the Pinellas County Libertarian Party fears that won't be sufficient to inform voters that in fact there is no Democrat running in the race, and they fear that some Democrats may choose Jany as opposed to their candidate, Lucas Overby.
Jany dropped out of the race to be the Democratic Party nominee in the CD 13 race in early May, shortly after he was selected by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) to be the party's nominee against Republican David Jolly, who had won the seat in a special election back in March.
According to Overby, Jany filed his paperwork sometime this summer informing the Federal Election Committee that he was no longer a candidate, but failed to follow up with the state's Division of Elections. Then the Division of Elections failed to notify the Pinellas Supervisor or Elections in time.
(Update: Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections spokesperson Nancy Whitlock emphasized to CL that "There was no failure on our part to remove Ed Jany from the ballot.").
"Obviously, I don’t think it was anything malicious or anything like that," Overby told CL on Thursday. The Libertarian candidate got 5 percent in the March election and is expected to do much better in November when he is Jolly's sole major challenger.
"I'm not that worried about it," Overby says. The 27-year-old commercial diver said he's more disappointed that Jolly has not consented to engage him in any debates before the November 4 election.
In the meantime, the Pinellas Libertarian Party wants to make sure everyone knows Jany is not a candidate.
"The media plays a vital role in educating voters about the candidates on their ballot," party chair Karena Morrison says in a statement. "And without a robust media reporting on this ballot issue, the potential of widespread voter disenfranchisement is an unacceptable reality in this election of a representative of our community."
This article appears in Sep 25 – Oct 1, 2014.