Redistricting legal battle returns to Florida Supreme Court

The Florida Legislature and the League of Women Voters squared off Thursday before the state Supreme Court as both sides continue an intense legal battle over the behind-the-scenes maneuvering that produced the Republican-crafted 2012 maps of state House and Senate districts.

House Speaker Will Weatherford and Senate President Don Gaetz, represented in court by former Supreme Court Justice Raoul Cantero, asked the state's highest court to block a lower court from holding a full-blown trial on claims by voting groups that lawmakers, consultants and party operatives schemed to draw districts to partisan advantage in violation of the two "fair districts" amendments to the state Constitution.

"The Constitution grants exclusive jurisdiction to the Supreme Court" on all redistricting matters, Cantero told reporters outside the courthouse. "We went through this very grueling process for several weeks last year and that's it until 2020 ... It's a close question and I'm confident they'll rule in our favor."

Miami lawyer Adam Schachter, representing the League of Women Voters and other groups, said the 2010 fair district amendments changed the Florida Constitution to prevent the Legislature from drawing districts that favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent. He said evidence already unearthed in the lower-court case, before Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis, suggests the amendments were violated.

"The Florida voters passed these amendments to change the process," Schachter told the justices, "and allowing them access to the courts is the way to effectuate that change."

Internal emails on both sides of the partisan divide in redistricting show that Republicans and Democrats both privately sought to maximize their political advantages in the once-a-decade remapping of political boundaries. Republicans used private email accounts, held brainstorming sessions and set up personal "dropboxes," and a Democratic consultant wrote a 2011 email that said in part: Underlying goal is to increase the number of safe Democratic seats and the number of competitive seats."

During nearly an hour of oral arguments Thursday, the most animated justice was Charles Canady, a former Republican state legislator and member of Congress, who was openly skeptical of many of Schacter's arguments, and suggested that there has to be a finality to lawsuits challenging redistricting plans. "We can be litigating these redistricting plans over and over and over again for the next decade," Canady said.

-- Steve Bousquet

As Senate reworks elections bill, supervisors are enraged

Senate Republicans on Tuesday revised a major elections bill that addresses some voting problems that made Florida a target of national ridicule in 2012, but they rejected changes Democrats sought and added a provision -- aimed at Miami-Dade's top elections official -- that angered election supervisors.

A final vote was delayed. The bill expands early voting sites in hopes of avoiding a repeat of last year's long lines, and mandates eight early voting days for up to 12 hours each day. County election supervisors could voluntarily extend early voting to 14 days, including on the Sunday before the election.

The bill addresses the widespread problem of sloppy absentee ballots by giving absentee voters the ability to fix a problem with their ballots -- such as a missing or non-matching signature -- up to 5 p.m. on the Sunday before an election. Bowing to
growing opposition, senators also dropped a provision that would have required absentee voters to have their ballots witnessed by an adult.

The  bill prohibits paid absentee ballot solicitors from receiving more than  two ballots for people other than family members, and it prohibits people from assisting more than 10 voters at the polls -- which a Miami-Dade civil rights group, Florida New Majority, says would result in the disenfranchisement of some voters. 

A last-minute amendment to the bill gives the Secretary of State the power to place a county supervisor of election on "noncompliant status," including the loss of $2,000 in salary, for up to three years for incompetence. Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami, who has been critical of Miami-Dade  Supervisor Penelope Townsley's handling of the 2012 election, sponsored  the provision. Townsley is the only supervisor among 67 who's appointed, not elected.

"It's more symbolic than anything else," Diaz de la Portilla said. "It's not about removal from office. Only the governor can do that."

Election supervisors are elected constitutional officers, like sheriffs, and the governor has the power to suspend them from office. Some supervisors were livid at Diaz de la Portilla's maneuver, which had never been heard in a committee.

"It was heavy-handed and truly a ham-fisted attempt to go after his own supervisor of elections," said Polk County Supervisor Lori Edwards, a former state House member. "It was a typical inside Tallahassee backroom deal."     

Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, manager of  the bill, said he was persuaded to support the provision, recalling how former Gov. Jeb Bush had to suspend Broward County Supervisor of Elections Miriam Oliphant from office for ineptitude.

"I don't think it should get to that," Latvala sai. "This is a token kind of thing that could be used by the Secretary of State to get the attention of supervisors who are not doing the job they were elected to do."

Senate Democrats tried in vain to make early voting mandatory on the Sunday before the election; to make "any suitable location" available for early voting; and to limit future ballot questions to no more than 150 words.  The bill (HB 7013) now returns to the full House for a vote, as county election supervisors try to strip out the "noncompliant" language.

-- Steve Bousquet

Awake the State rally a sign of frustrated voters

While House representatives were voting on the Florida Election Code late Tuesday afternoon, a crowd of protestors rallied on the steps outside the old Capital building blasting a flawed 2012 election, with songs, signs and plenty of speeches.

The Tallahassee event was part of Awake the State -- Free the Vote grassroots rallies in 23 Florida communities, with appearances by four Democratic senators: Chris Smith of Fort Lauderdale, Jeff Clemens of Lake Worth, Oscar Braynon of Miami Gardens and Dwight Bullard of Miami. Other speakers included Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho, students and representatives of the Dream Defenders, Florida NOW, the AFL-CIO and other groups.

  "The point is to send a clear message to the Legislature that we want to see meaningful election reform during the legislative session," said Damien Filer, of Progress Florida, organizers of Awake the State. 

Miami-Dade commission agrees to limit number of county questions on presidential ballots

@PatriciaMazzei

Miami-Dade commissioners signed off on a pair of elections reforms Tuesday, including one intended to keep future presidential ballots short.

The board voted 6-5 to approve Commissioner Barbara Jordan’s proposal to limit the number of county questions on presidential-election ballots to three, with a two-thirds vote of the commission required to add more questions.

There is currently no limit on how many charter amendments or nonbinding straw-ballot questions can be included on a Miami-Dade ballot. Commissioners placed 10 questions on November’s ballot, which, along with 11 state constitutional amendments, contributed to long voting lines at the polls.

“I want the citizens to really have the opportunity to understand the items that are there,” Jordan said.

Several of her colleagues said they had misgivings about any attempt to keep issues from making it onto the ballot.

“Really, it doesn’t help the democratic process,” said Commissioner Javier Souto, who made passing mentions of Hitler and Stalin. A group of 60 German police officers was visiting the commission chambers, learning about local government. 

Phantom ballots, a mystery hacker and a grand jury: Miami-Dade's electoral whodunit

The first phantom absentee ballot request hit the Miami-Dade elections website at 9:11 p.m. Saturday, July 7.

The next one came at 9:14. Then 9:17. 9:22. 9:24. 9:25.

Within 2½ weeks, 2,552 online requests arrived from voters who had not applied for absentee ballots. They streamed in much too quickly for real people to be filling them out. They originated from only a handful of Internet Protocol addresses. And they were not random.

It had all the appearances of a political dirty trick, a high-tech effort by an unknown hacker to sway three key Aug. 14 primary elections, a Miami Herald investigation has found.

The plot failed. The elections department’s software flagged the requests as suspicious. The ballots weren’t sent out.

But who was behind it? And next time, would a more skilled hacker be able to rig an election?

Six months and a grand-jury probe later, there still are few answers about the phantom requests, which targeted Democratic voters in a congressional district and Republican voters in two Florida House districts.

The foreman of that grand jury, whose report made public the existence of the phantom requests, said jurors were eager to learn if a candidate or political consultant had succeeded in manipulating the voting system. But they didn’t get any answers.

“We were like, ‘Why didn’t anyone do something about it?’ ” foreman Jeffrey Pankey said.

Read the story here. View a map of the phantom requests here.

Judge: Miami-Dade has power to enact absentee-ballot law

In its effort to crack down on voter fraud, Miami-Dade County has the authority to limit how many absentee ballots a voter can possess, a judge ruled Friday.

The ruling came in the case of Sergio “El Tio” Robaina, whose lawyers had challenged a county ordinance that makes it a misdemeanor to collect multiple absentee ballots.

Prosecutors say Robaina, 74, illegally collected absentee ballots and filled out two against the wishes of two voters, one of them a woman with dementia. He faces two felony counts of voter fraud, and two misdemeanor counts of illegally possessing absentee ballots.

The Miami-Dade County Commission, worried about the perception of election fraud, passed the ordinance two years ago. A person may turn in only two absentee ballots in addition to their own: one belonging to an immediate family member and another belonging to a voter who has signed a sworn statement designating that person as responsible.

Friday’s order by Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch was his second ruling against Robaina.

More from David Ovalle here.

Liberal group: Fox radio 'mocked' wait of 102-year-old North Miami voter featured at State of the Union

From the liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America:

After glossing over state Republicans' role in exacerbating long lines at the ballot box, three Fox hosts mocked the hours-long wait and multiple trips a 102-year-old woman endured in order to cast her vote in 2012.

On Fox News Radio's Kilmeade & Friends, host Brian Kilmeade and Fox's Martha MacCallum and Bill Hemmer laughed off the difficulties 102-year-old Desiline Victor endured in order to vote in the 2012 election. Victor, who was invited to the State of the Union address and whom President Obama applauded for enduring a long wait to vote, had to make two trips to the polls and wait in line for over three hours before she was able to cast her ballot. Discussing Victor, MacCallum wondered, "What's the big deal?" and said, "This is such a non-issue. Ridiculous." Hemmer added that at the State of the Union, "They held her up as a victim. What was she a victim of?"

Full post, including audio, here. Read The Miami Herald story about Desiline Victor here.

Orlando Sentinel: 200,000+ Floridians discouraged from voting by long lines, hassles

Interesting report from the Orlando Sentinel, which puts a number (a rough estimate to be sure) on the number of Floridians who didn't vote because of long lines and Election Day hassles: 200,000 --and perhaps higher.

Says the Sentinel:

Analyzing data compiled by the Orlando Sentinel, Ohio State University professor Theodore Allen estimated last week that at least 201,000 voters likely gave up in frustration on Nov. 6, based on research Allen has been doing on voter behavior.

His preliminary conclusion was based on the Sentinel's analysis of voter patterns and precinct-closing times in Florida's 25 largest counties, home to 86 percent of the state's 11.9 million registered voters.

"My gut is telling me that the real number [of voters] deterred is likely higher," Allen said. "You make people wait longer, they are less likely to vote."

Around the state, nearly 2 million registered voters live in precincts that stayed open at least 90 minutes past the scheduled 7 p.m. closing time, according to Sentinel analysis of voting data obtained from county elections supervisors. Of those, 561,000 voters live in precincts that stayed open three extra hours or longer.

While an estimate, the number isn't surprising. And, folks should note, these weren't all Obama voters who were turned away. The week after the election, here's my column on the anecdotal evidence of voter suppression:

Ethics gets another dose of reform, this time from Fasano

Hoping the third time is the charm, Rep. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, has filed an ethics bill similar to ones he filed as a state senator in 2011 and last year.

Although Fasano’s two previous attempts failed – rather quickly -- the appetite for ethics reform is seemingly insatiable this year among Republicans. Senate President Don Gaetz and House Speaker Will Weatherford have branded ethics reform as the cause celebre of this year’s session that start in March.

“I’m very optimistic, the leadership, the tone from both leaders gives us hope that if not our legislation, something similar to our legislation will deal with these issues,” Fasano said Thursday.

Gov. Rick Scott calls for up to 14 early-voting days, more sites

Gov. Rick Scott on Thursday formally endorsed the three major changes to election procedures recommended by state election supervisors, days after a team of supervisors testified before legislative committees.

In a statement issued after a meeting with Secretary of State Ken Detzner, Scott specifically endorsed these changes:

* Increasing the number of early voting days from eight to a maximum of 14, from six to 12 hours each day, and including the Sunday before Election Day at the election supervisor's option.

* Expanding the locations for early voting beyond the existing law, which is limited to elections offices, city halls and libraries.

* Reducing the length of the ballot, including descriptions of constitutional amendments.

All three proposals require legislative approval. Scott did not specifically call for a change in state law to prevent the Legislature from requiring that the full text of ballot questions be presented to voters.

Scott issued this statement: "Our ultimate goal must be to restore Floridians' confidence in our election system ... We need more early voting days, which should include an option of the Sunday before Election Day, and we need more early voting locations."

Scott's statement comes in the wake of a chaotic Florida election when voters waited up to seven hours to cast ballots, and national news organizations declared President Barack Obama the winner before the state's final results were posted.  

--STEVE BOUSQUET