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Top Three Takeaways – December 2nd, 2021
- Is partisanship the answer? Ask the average person that question regardless of the issue and what’s the likely answer going to be? Something just about all of us can agree on, regardless of political persuasion, is that more partisanship isn’t generally a good thing. Now, less ubiquitously, there are times I specifically root for partisanship to win out if it means bad policy proposals won’t become law. A current example being the so-called “Build Back Better” plan in Congress. Nothing happening with Joe Biden’s agenda from here is from better than any of it happening in my book. So, if all Republicans and say, Joe Manchin, can stop it from happening...bring on maximum partisanship for the rest of this Congress. But my purpose for addressing this topic today isn’t about anything that may or may not occur in Congress. It’s about the potential change of some of the most local elections we have in our communities. School board elections. In this year of an awakening, in which parents across the country and right here in South Florida have become more engaged with school boards than at any time in recent memory, changes to the way we elect school board members are being strongly considered in our state legislature. The bill proposed in the state Senate by Joe Gruters took its first big step towards becoming a potential reality in our state on Tuesday when it passed the Senate Ethics and Rules committee on a party-line vote. The effort to introduce partisan school board races was perhaps appropriately...partisan, with the Republicans voting for it, with Democrats opposing it. Now a lot still has to happen in the state legislature before it’s a potential reality, but it’s now officially an issue in Florida that will be under serious consideration in January’s upcoming legislative session. Should the legislature pass it the final decision will be...
- Up to you. That’s because a constitutional amendment would be required to change the existing non-partisan approach to Florida’s school board races. Should the legislature pass this bill it’d be placed on our mid-term election ballots next November and would require 60% support to be approved. As for whether any of this is a good idea... I find myself somewhat conflicted. Ideally, keeping partisan politics out of education should be the goal. In reality, we’ve learned during the pandemic just how hyper-partisan many school board members are, whether they have run as partisan’s or not. My overarching goal as it pertains to school boards is to continue to increase engagement with these boards to ensure there’s accountability for what’s happening in the classroom. To that end we know part of the reason turnout tends to be low for these types of elections is that it’s often harder to vet non-partisan candidates and thus many people simply don’t participate in those elections. Clearly having these elections as partisan races would aid many in the vetting process and would likely increase participation in the process, and perhaps at actual board meetings as well. That’s the best argument for taking that approach. Also, not that two wrongs make a right, but in a state where we make our own election’s supervisors and sheriffs run as partisans (as though partisan considerations should come into play with the officials counting everyone’s votes or the law enforcement professionals responsible for equitably applying the law), it’s seemingly more justified to have partisan school board races as well. But again, should this continue to progress in the upcoming state session the final decision will be up to you. Speaking of elections...
- Governor DeSantis is right. Florida does need a state agency to investigate and combat voter fraud. Yesterday, in talking with J. Christian Adams of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, I learned of the necessity of the newly proposed agency. As I’ve long covered, voter fraud in Florida, as in every state in the country, is a real threat every electioncycle. There have been 24 criminal convictions for voter fraud in Florida since 2010. As it turns out that pales in comparison to the number of pending voter fraud cases that haven’t been prosecuted at the local level. As evidenced in the PILF’s report, there are currently 156 pending voter fraud cases in Florida which have been referred to prosecutors but haven’t been pursued by prosecutors. And surprise, surprise, most of them are right here in South Florida. There are currently 12 unprosecuted voter fraud cases in Palm Beach County, 42 in Miami-Dade and 78 in Broward. So, the first question is how state attorneys in South Florida can justify not prosecuting referred voter fraud cases. They need to answer for this. Secondly, if local officials won’t prosecute voter fraud, it’s clear the state should be in a position to do so. As J. Christian Adams pointed out, voter fraud that’s unprosecuted begets more voter fraud. There’s no permissible level of it.