Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

How open primaries got the most votes and still got rejected in Florida

Florida primary

Fifty-seven percent of the vote wasn't enough to pass an amendment to the Florida Constitution.

Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images
Hough is director of Florida Fair and Open Primaries, which campaigned for the November ballot measure that would have allowed all voters to participate in a single nominating contest for state offices, with the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, advancing to the general election. Independent Voter News published an earlier version of this piece.

Votes are still being counted in several states across the country — but, unlike 20 years ago, Florida is not among them and so is not in the spotlight. But the state should nonetheless be highlighted as the place where a proposed state constitutional amendment received 57 percent of the vote last week, and still was not adopted.

Amendment 3 proposed the implementation of nonpartisan top-two open primaries to reform the current closed primary system in Florida. A clear majority of voters want to get rid of our closed primaries. But, for the past 14 years, a supermajority of 60 percent has been required on a ballot measure proposing a constitutional amendment.

It is worth noting a bit of the history behind the movement for open primaries in Florida.

In 1998, Floridians overwhelmingly voted for an amendment that allowed every voter to vote in a primary election when only one party fields candidates and would face no opposition in the general election. It passed with 64 percent support, at a time when a simple majority was still the threshold for approval.

Upon passage, the political parties sought an opinion on whether write-in candidates constituted valid opposition. The state said yes, and the courts upheld that view.

A loophole for undermining the will of almost two in three Floridians thereby became available to partisan political operatives. Since that time, Republican and Democratic leaders alike have enlisted bogus write-in candidates so that they could keep their primaries closed to all the voters who are not registered members of their parties.

The most egregious case involved a candidate who recruited her mother to run against her as a write-in in two consecutive elections.

Twenty years later, the convening of the Florida Constitution Revision Commission produced an outcry for open primaries. During public hearings, open primaries became the second-most popular issue raised — right behind the automatic restoration of voting rights for formerly incarcerated citizens.

Two commissioners sponsored proposals, one for an open primary and the other to close the write-in loophole.

Although both received support in committees, the full commission refused to advance the proposals to the 2018 ballot.

My grassroots organization immediately formed a political committee, submitted petitions to the secretary of state and put volunteers to work collecting signatures. We had collected 8,500 signatures when we heard that a wealthy Miami resident was interested in open primaries.

We put our effort on pause when we then heard he was teaming up with another organization, All Voters Vote. We withdrew our petitions and dedicated ourselves to supporting that group's effort. That culminated in forming a new PAC, Florida Open Primaries, the sole purpose of which was to promote what became Amendment 3.

The All Voters Vote team did the heavy lifting of collecting more than 1 million signatures and fending off the inevitable court challenges. Now, it was time for us to get to work.

With the incredible assistance of Open Primaries, we raised some money, produced a video ad, hired a media firm, printed yard signs, began submitting letters to the editor — and put my organization's co-founder, Jeff Solomon, to work pounding out emails.

With very few resources our video got 400,000 views. Five million emails were sent, resulting in 1.2 million direct contacts. Volunteers stepped up and placed 1,000 yard signs across the state. Others wrote letters to the editor and op-eds or recorded short video testimonials. Some polling was conducted and we were feeling good about our prospects of winning. Then a bomb went off.

It was no secret that both major parties opposed Amendment 3. But inAugust they went nuclear.

Until that time, the Florida League of Women Voters supported our effort. They even helped collect signatures to get it on the ballot. But then its leaders saw an article in the Tampa Bay Times about a report that Amendment 3 would "bleach" a number of Black-majority districts and would lead to less minority representation.

Given the national environment of racial tension, the League was pressured to throw out years of studying the issue and reverse its previous support. The report at issue was produced by a freelance consultant with ties to the state Democratic Party. Ignoring evidence that minority representation has increased in California since its adoption of a similar top-two primary system, the League withdrew its support. (Two board members resigned in protest.)

Soon after, the Black Legislative Caucus held a news conference denouncing Amendment 3. And mailers paid for by the Florida Democratic Party blanketed the state containing photos of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and former Rep. John Lewis claiming that Amendment 3 would reverse the gains Black voters have made over the decades of struggle for voting rights.

The Republican Party of Florida followed suit with mailers claiming the amendment was being promoted by "leftists" antagonistic to President Trump. The campaigns were underhanded to say the least.

Despite the parties' aggressive smear campaigns, our effort still received 57 percent of the vote. That is a clear majority and, in my book, a huge win.

Visit IVN.us for more from Independent Voter News.

Read More

Connecticut: Democracy, Innovation, and Economic Resilience

The 50: Connecticut

Credit: Hugo Balta

Connecticut: Democracy, Innovation, and Economic Resilience

The 50 is a four-year multimedia project in which the Fulcrum visits different communities across all 50 states to learn what motivated them to vote in the 2024 presidential election and see how the Donald Trump administration is meeting those concerns and hopes.

Hartford, Connecticut, stands as a living testament to American democracy, ingenuity, and resilience. As the state’s capital, it’s home to cultural landmarks like the Mark Twain House & Museum, where Twain penned The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, embodying the spirit of self-governance and creative daring that defines the region.

Keep ReadingShow less
Hand blocking someone speaking

The Third Way has recently released a memo stating that the “stampede away from the Democratic Party” is partly a result of the language and rhetoric it uses.

Westend61/Getty Images

To Protect Democracy, Democrats Should Pay Attention to the Third Way’s List of ‘Offensive’ Words

More than fifty years ago, comedian George Carlin delivered a monologue entitled Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.” It was a tribute to the legendary Lenny Bruce, whose “nine dirty words” performance led to his arrest and his banning from many places.

His seven words were “p—, f—, c—, c———, m———–, and t—.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Fox News’ Selective Silence: How Trump’s Worst Moments Vanish From Coverage
Why Fox News’ settlement with Dominion Voting Systems is good news for all media outlets
Getty Images

Fox News’ Selective Silence: How Trump’s Worst Moments Vanish From Coverage

Last week, the ultraconservative news outlet, NewsMax, reached a $73 million settlement with the voting machine company, Dominion, in essence, admitting that they lied in their reporting about the use of their voting machines to “rig” or distort the 2020 presidential election. Not exactly shocking news, since five years later, there is no credible evidence to suggest any malfeasance regarding the 2020 election. To viewers of conservative media, such as Fox News, this might have shaken a fully embraced conspiracy theory. Except it didn’t, because those viewers haven’t seen it.

Many people have a hard time understanding why Trump enjoys so much support, given his outrageous statements and damaging public policy pursuits. Part of the answer is due to Fox News’ apparent censoring of stories that might be deemed negative to Trump. During the past five years, I’ve tracked dozens of examples of news stories that cast Donald Trump in a negative light, including statements by Trump himself, which would make a rational person cringe. Yet, Fox News has methodically censored these stories, only conveying rosy news that draws its top ratings.

Keep ReadingShow less
U.S. Flag / artificial intelligence / technology / congress / ai

The age of AI warrants asking if the means still further the ends—specifically, individual liberty and collective prosperity.

Getty Images, Douglas Rissing

Liberty and the General Welfare in the Age of AI

If the means justify the ends, we’d still be operating under the Articles of Confederation. The Founders understood that the means—the governmental structure itself—must always serve the ends of liberty and prosperity. When the means no longer served those ends, they experimented with yet another design for their government—they did expect it to be the last.

The age of AI warrants asking if the means still further the ends—specifically, individual liberty and collective prosperity. Both of those goals were top of mind for early Americans. They demanded the Bill of Rights to protect the former, and they identified the latter—namely, the general welfare—as the animating purpose for the government. Both of those goals are being challenged by constitutional doctrines that do not align with AI development or even undermine it. A full review of those doctrines could fill a book (and perhaps one day it will). For now, however, I’m just going to raise two.

Keep ReadingShow less