Bill would close write-in loophole

Hollywood Sen. Eleanor Sobel has introduced what she says is a legislative fix for a perennial bugaboo in state elections — complications extending from minor write-in candidates who rarely gain a significant share of the vote, but who often cause procedural headaches for candidates and sometimes cost the taxpayers  to finance low-stakes special elections.

Sobel’s bill, SB 840, comes in the wake of invalidated results and a subsequent special election in Tampa Rep. Jamie Grant‘s re-election to a House seat in District 64. Grant won handily with more than 59 percent of the vote over his sole viable opponent in the race, Miriam Steinberg. Prior to the election a candidate some would describe as a nuisance write-in, Daniel John Matthews, was excluded from the ballot by a circuit court judge because he did not live in the district.

Grant was declared the winner and was set to be sworn in along with his colleagues.

Then came a 1st District Court of Appeal ruling that Matthews should have remained on the ballot regardless of his not living in District 64. The Florida House took a vote and decided not to seat Grant to avoid cementing the results of an election now ruled invalid, a decision Grant agreed with.

“How do I go to Tallahassee and take an oath to uphold the Constitution and have gotten there in an election that directly violated the Constitution?” Grant said in November, perhaps with an eye toward gaining extra terms of eligibility that may come with the anomalous interruption of his consecutive service.

The appellate court overturned the prior ruling on the basis that a state law requiring write-ins to live within the district they seek to represent at the time of qualification contradicts the Florida Constitution, which provides simply that candidates must live in their prospective districts by the time an election is held.

Sobel’s bill would delete that statutory provision and revert the status quo back to the less stringent constitutional requirement.

The bill would add clarity to such idiosyncratic situations. It may also make it easier for campaigns to plant electorally inert write-in candidates, a tactic sometimes used to trigger a closed primary in cases when candidates from only one party are competing.

SB 840, filed Wednesday, has so far not been matched with a House companion bill.