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Ben Wilcox, the research director for Integrity Florida, has heard a lot of frustrated noise coming out of Santa Rosa County this year on the topic of ghost candidates.
And understandably so. The 2024 batch of Santa Rosa write-ins prevented registered Democrats and Independents from voting in all three County Commission races, and, according to research done by the government accountability medium Florida Trident, disenfranchised some 53,000 county residents.
Two write-ins signed on to run against Commissioner Sam Parker in District 1. Two write-ins jumped into the race for James Calkins District 3 seat and three write-ins are running against District 5 Commissioner Colten Wright. Not a single one has raised the first dime, though all are, technically, still in the running for the seat they qualified to run for.
State Rep. Joel Rudman, R-Navarre, has heard the rumblings from his constituents as well, and in a post on his “Dr. Joel Rudman for Florida House” Facebook Page, he has promised to do something about it.
“You say you want election integrity? To me, that includes having only candidates on the ballot who actually intend to run. This whole “ghost candidate” strategy used by unscrupulous politicians to split the anti-establishment vote has gotten out of hand. They aren’t even hiding their tactics anymore,” he wrote. “You will see an election integrity bill come from my desk next session.”
Ghost candidates are loosely defined as those who sign up to seek an office as a write-in, thereby avoiding qualifying fees, who don’t receive or spend campaign contributions, do little or no campaigning and accomplish nothing by their presence in the race other than turning an otherwise open primary into one in which only members of a single party can vote.
A true ghost candidate’s presence in the race is acknowledged in November, when a blank line appears on the general election ballot to give voters the opportunity to fill-in a name.
This year, not only in Santa Rosa County but also in Escambia County, write-in candidates closed open elections in four county races total, and as Escambia County District 1 Commissioner Jeff Bergosh noted, there is nothing illegal about the practice.
“Here’s what I’m going to say about the write-in candidates, and I’m going to be very clear with what I say,” he said. “The write-in candidate is 100%, legal, lawful, and it’s written in the state statutes.”
More: Commissioner Jeff Bergosh ousted from Escambia County Board, falling to Steve Stroberger
Bergosh, who lost his bid for re-election Aug. 20, made the comments when approached by the Pensacola News Journal about ties between himself and the families of two write-in candidates signed up to oppose him. Florida Trident reported that the write-in candidates disenfranchised 110,000 Escambia County voters.
The publication looked statewide at the impact of write-in candidates and found across Florida 2 million voters were left out of the election process by write-in or ghost candidates.
Running as a ghost candidate is not a crime, but ghost candidates and their cohorts in other parts of the state have been criminally charged and convicted for violations of other campaign regulations, including incorrectly reporting contributions and using someone else’s name when donating to a campaign or accepting large donations.
The most notorious of the cases involved former Republican Florida State Rep. Frank Artiles, who was ultimately charged for paying a friend, Alexis “Alex” Rodriguez, to run as a NPA candidate for a state Senate seat against Democrat Jose Javier Rodríguez.
Artiles’ suspected effort to confuse voters with two candidates of the same last name appeared to have been successful. Jose Javier Rodríguez, the Democratic incumbent, wound up losing to Republican Ileana Garcia by 34 votes.
Florida write-in candidates, and the ghost candidates who have spun off, were actually inadvertently created by an action taken in 1998 by the Florida Constitution Revision Commission, Wilcox said. That group decided to open state primary elections to all voters in the event that an opposing party did not field a candidate for office.
The Florida Legislature was tasked with finding a way to implement the constitutional provision but could not decide how best to do so. The Florida House, Wilcox said, favored closing the primary ballots to a single party if write-in candidates entered the race. The Senate held that write-in candidates should participate in the primary alongside the qualified partisan candidates and the contest would remain open.
With the two chambers at an impasse, the question of whether to close the primaries fell to the Department of State, Wilcox said, and then-Secretary of State Katherine Harris sided with the House’s position. A Florida Supreme Court ruling upheld Harris’s decision.
“Talking to members of the ’98 Commission, they did not even consider the impact of the write-in,” Wilcox said.
Wilcox said he’s happy to see a Florida lawmaker step up to challenge the write-in candidate law as it’s applied now.
“It’s encouraging to me there’s a legislator listening to people that are expressing outrage at this loophole,” he said. “And a lot of the outrage I’m hearing is coming from Santa Rosa County, whose citizens don’t like being disenfranchised.”
He said the Legislature could “absolutely” address putting a stop to write-in candidates signing up simply to close a particular primary by including the vote for the write-in on the primary ballot to allow all voters to weigh in on their candidacy at that time.
“I personally question why we have write-in candidates,” he said. “It’s very easy to file the paperwork and the only way to win is to mount some type of advertising campaign to rally people to write in that blank space. “
He said the Florida Constitution calls for open elections in cases where two political parties are not represented. The write-in loophole that allows the closing of the primaries “caters to the extremes of both parties.”
“Candidates don’t have to reach out to other party affiliated people to get their votes,” he said. “That leads to the election of extreme candidates.”
Calkins, a first-term incumbent who finished third Aug. 20 in a three man race for his District 3 seat, would likely qualify under Wilcox’s definition of “extreme.” In one meeting he denounced another commissioner’s appointment to a county board because the nominee was a registered Democrat, and called Democrats evil. Rather than issuing an apology after facing a barrage of criticism at the commission’s next meeting, he doubled down on the comments.
“I stand by my statements. I believe that the Democratic Party platform is evil. A party that is for, that their platform is for, the murder of innocent babies, is evil,” he said.
Like Bergosh, one of the write-in candidates who signed up to oppose Calkins and close the District 3 primary had ties to him. Calkins’ campaign signs were discovered posted in the yard of Sandra Maddox after she filed to run. Calkins paid Roger Bellanger, Maddox’s son, for work done for Calkins’ campaign.
Wilcox said the law currently governing write-in candidates would be “very easy to overturn,” but questions whether the political will to do so is there.
“I say let’s at least talk about it, but I don’t know if it will get a committee hearing or not,” he said. “They like the loophole. Both parties like using the write-in candidate to close the primaries. If the Legislature is going to do it, they’re going to have to get some support from both political parties.”
Rudman’s call for action to end ghost candidate activities has not been universally supported. Some commenters to his Facebook page said, basically, that Republicans should vote for Republican candidates and Democrats should vote for Democratic candidates.
State Rep. Alex Andrade, a Republican whose district borders Rudman’s, said he’s not presently a fan of Rudman’s proposed legislation.
“Until I see a bill, I can’t say I will support it. At first glance I have Constitutional concerns about a proposal that gives the government the power to decide which American citizens are and are not ‘legitimate’ candidates for public office,” Andrade said. “I believe primary elections should be closed. Primaries simply allow political parties to choose their champion to represent them on the general election ballot.”
Efforts to reach former state Sen. Don Gaetz, who is seeking another term in office in Florida’s District 1, and state Rep. Michelle Salzman, were not successful.
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Publish date : 2024-09-02 22:06:00
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