Once again, more than half of Indian River County’s voters are being disenfranchised by the Florida practice of closing any primary once a write-in candidate appears.
In Indian River, which is so dominated by a MAGA Republican Party, winning its primary almost guarantees election. It happens all the time and is little more than a transparent ploy to help make sure that a favored, usually far-right, candidate wins its primary.
Here we have critical races for sheriff and county commissioner. In both, fringe write-in candidates have appeared.
With no meaningful choice otherwise — Democrats are successfully discouraged from even running — voters with no party affiliation and Democrats would like to have a voice in these de facto general elections, pitting favored far-right, or even arguably unfit candidates, against more moderate candidates like Fellsmere Police Chief Keith Touchberry or Milo Thronton (sheriff’s race) and Commissioner Laura Moss, who has sought to represent all of her constituents as a commissioner.
But it doesn’t end there. Some want to do the same to currently nonpartisan school board elections, with an initiative on this November’s ballot that would make those partisan as well. If that passes, we can be sure that our school board will become just another tool of the MAGA agenda to ban books and make curriculum conform to the right’s social agenda at the expense of our children’s education.
We know that both parties are guilty of this practice in counties they dominate and tacitly agree to allow it to continue, but it should change. Frankly, its a disgrace to democracy and makes a mockery of the idea of “one man, one vote.”
Fred Grumman, Vero Beach
Published in TC Palm 7/10/24