BlogWood: MT Archives

Jeb! seeks power to "fix" elections

Katherine Harris helped to throw the 2000 election to George W Bush. She was both Florida’s secretary of state, in charge of statewide elections, and Bush’s Florida campaign manager.

Her successor, Glenda Hood, made many decisions last year that could be seen as partisan, including her blind support for a fatally flawed felon purge list that would have unfairly excluded black Democrats from voting rolls while ignoring Hispanic felons who tend to vote Republican.

Now, as noted yesterday, Jeb! wants to vest even more power in the office of Secretary of State, because if his minions lack the power to fix an election, then democracy suffers.

Ever since November, state officials have been crowing about how well Florida ran its presidential election.

Popular early voting, healthy turnout and only a handful of official complaints seemed a testament to voting changes lawmakers passed after the 2000 presidential election debacle.

So it came as a shock to legislative leaders and county elections supervisors when Gov. Jeb Bush unveiled a sweeping proposal Wednesday that concentrated power over how counties run elections in the hands of Secretary of State Glenda Hood.

"I have seen very good policy die because of a flawed process and an unwillingness or inability to get a buy-in from all the stakeholders," Senate President Tom Lee, R-Brandon, said Thursday. "I think that will hurt the secretary of state in the Legislature when she goes to try to accomplish this objective."

The bill would give Hood the final word in interpreting state and federal elections law, as well as voter rolls.

It also would grant her the authority to seek fines and criminal charges against county supervisors of election who fail to follow her interpretation of elections law.

The measure is supposed to be a response to a federal law that requires, among other things, a statewide voter database and uniformity in voting.

But critics say it goes far beyond the federal law.

Faced with legislative leaders' concerns and a near mutiny among some county elections supervisors, Bush said Thursday he's willing to compromise on a bill that preserves the role of county supervisors as caretaker of the voting rolls.

His real priority is to give the secretary of state some recourse when they fail to do it, Bush said.

"I kind of like the idea that supervisors should be responsible for maintaining the list. The problem is when they ignore their responsibility," Bush said.

"There needs to be a means ... for the secretary of state, who is the chief elections officer, to be able to have the wherewithal to sanction and, if necessary, take charge," he said.

Bush didn't name specific supervisors who he says failed in their duties, but last year he criticized several who refused during the last election to purge voters whose names appeared on a state list of felons, who can't vote in Florida unless they've had their civil rights restored.

The state ultimately scrapped the list, which turned out to be flawed.
......

Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate in Washington, D.C., said he would support a central official being the final word on elections laws and procedures in some states - but not Florida.

The state has a history of political contamination in its highest elections office, he said, making it unwise to designate that office as the final arbiter on laws and procedures.

"There have been a lot of interpretations by Katherine Harris and her successor that have been partisan interpretations," Gans said, referring to Hood's predecessor, now in Congress. "(But) if the secretary of state were isolated from politics, that would be fine."

Sen. Nan Rich echoed those concerns.

The Weston Democrat and vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Ethics and Elections said Hood's office has become an extension of Bush's office, and that the close association threatens the integrity of the state's voting procedures.

"There's not a pretense, even. It seems that the governor's office and the secretary of state are becoming one and that's wrong," Rich said.