South Florida Sun Sentinel. May 22, 2024.
Editorial: Shining new light on Florida voters’ views
A newly released statewide survey of Floridians’ attitudes about voting and elections provides some reassuring information at the outset of a highly volatile presidential campaign.
The survey was conducted by the LeRoy Collins Institute at Florida State University over a two-month period soon after the 2022 midterm election. A total of 6,242 voters completed an online survey out of a universe of more than 253,000 who cast ballots in the general election in 2022.
The institute said its findings were weighted to reflect the electorate based on all voters’ age, sex, ethnicity, type of ballot (by mail, early, or in person on election day). The weighting also included the outcome, in which Republican Ron DeSantis won with 59% of the vote.
First, the good news: More than nine out of 10 voters (94%) said they were either very confident (74%) or somewhat confident (20%) that their vote actually counted.
Floridians, in this survey at least, didn’t buy the fiction that votes are systematically discarded by some sinister force.
Of those who voted by mail in 2022, an overwhelming 97% said it was an excellent (67%) or good experience (30%). In the November 2022 election, 36% of voters voted by mail, down from a record high of 43% at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Those are among the assessments from a pool of voters in which 46% described themselves as very or somewhat conservative and 23% described themselves as very or somewhat liberal. Most of the rest (26%) called themselves politically moderate.
Warning signals
The Collins survey contains cautionary notes for the 67 county election supervisors, the ones on the ground who actually send out vote-by-mail ballots, staff early voting sites and count the votes on election day.
Counties work diligently to remind voters they must submit new requests for a vote-by-mail ballot, and that they can track their ballot in the weeks leading up to election day, but too many people still didn’t know that.
A total of 56% of vote-by-mail voters in the survey said they tracked their ballots in 2022, but among those who said they didn’t, 40% said they were unaware that they could.
The Collins Institute recommends a campaign to expand the ballot tracking program to get more voters signed up.
One in four voters (25%) said they believe that it’s somewhat or very easy for “politicians, union officials or the people you work for” to find out how you voted. Only 20% said they believed it’s impossible to find out.
Voters overwhelmingly support the photo ID requirement at the polls (90%), and they trust machine counting of ballots over counting by hand, 79% to 21%.
By some measures, the survey sample was not a fully accurate snapshot of the current Florida electorate.
For instance, this finding is interesting, but it’s hardly typical: Of 3,131 voters who said they engaged in any form of political activity in 2022, nearly one-third of them (1,036) said they donated money to candidates, and that about one-third of those candidates ran for state office.
In addition, 38% of respondents self-identified as strong, weak or leaning Democrat, while 51% said they were strong, weak or leaning Republican.
The actual voter registration numbers at the time of the survey showed that 46% were Republicans, 33% were Democrats and the other 21% were unaffiliated or members of minor parties.
The Republican advantage over Democrats in voter registration continues to widen and today is nearly at 1 million voters.
Information is important
In Florida, there is no such thing as too much information about how people perceive the voting experience.
Too few eligible adults in Florida are registered to vote, and among those who are actually registered, too few of them vote, especially in midterm, non-presidential elections.
Anything that improves the voting experience is a net positive for democracy, which these days needs all the help it can get.
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Tampa Bay Times. May 22, 2024.
Editorial: Can’t Florida give farmworkers a seat belt?
The most dangerous part of the job is often getting to and from the fields.
Make no mistake: The person who needs to account for the deadly crash of a bus carrying farmworkers last week is the 41-year-old man whom authorities have charged with DUI manslaughter. But the public also deserves a fuller picture of what may have contributed to this tragedy — specifically, an examination of this bus and of the road-worthiness more generally of vehicles that routinely transport farmworkers across Florida’s highways. Every motorist who shares the road has an interest in staying safe.
The crash May 14 killed eight farmworkers and injured at least four dozen others along State Road 40 outside Ocala. The Florida Highway Patrol arrested Bryan Maclean Howard, the driver of a pickup truck that crashed into the farmworker bus, and Howard faces eight counts of driving-under-the-influence-manslaughter.
In the hours after the crash, seven workers spoke to the Tampa Bay Times about what happened on the bus, provided by Olvera Trucking Corp. All seven workers told the Times the bus didn’t have seat belts. While Florida law requires safety belts in newer school buses, that requirement does not apply to buses shuttling farmworkers. Florida law requires smaller vehicles that transport farmworkers to have seat belts, but Florida’s fruit and vegetable industry has opposed a new federal rule issued last month that would broaden the mandate for seat belts on employer-provided transportation.
Why are we dithering about seat belts in 2024? This is basic safety equipment that’s saved hundred of thousands of lives and whose use American motorists accept almost universally. Getting farmworkers to and from the fields is a massive operation in agriculture-rich Florida. Buses carrying farmworkers travel Florida’s interstates and country roads alike, often before sunrise and after dark. And they’re typically filled to the brim with migrants working a job that few Floridians would.
Last week’s crash was among the deadliest involving Florida farmworkers within the past two decades. But while it took a steep toll, deadly crashes are all too commonplace for the job. Nationally, vehicle collisions were the leading cause of job-related deaths among farmworkers involved in harvesting in 2022, accounting for 81 of 171 fatalities, according to the most recent federal data. It’s another example of how farmworkers are written off — their deaths and injuries the price of doing business.
Every commercial vehicle transporting a human being should have safety restraints. Harvesting crops is dangerous enough; a society that enjoys the benefits of low-wage labor should at least recognize its self-interest in protecting this essential workforce. To that end, transport vehicles should be regularly inspected to meet minimum operating standards. Bald tires, bad brakes and inoperable lights and wipers all pose a danger to passing motorists, too. Unsafe vehicles don’t belong on the road.
These buses lack seat belts for one reason — because providing them would cut into the industry’s bottom line. It’s another example of who pays the hidden price of making Florida more affordable. But what Floridian wouldn’t pay an extra nickel for watermelons if that meant saving lives and making our highways safer for everybody? Investigators need to provide a full picture of the vehicles involved in the Ocala tragedy so the state can finally address this gaping safety lapse.
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Miami Herald. May 23, 2024.
Editorial: What climate change? As South Florida sizzles, DeSantis chooses denial with new law
This month has already proven be one for the records — the hottest May ever documented in Miami, based on the heat index, a “feels like” measure that accounts for temperature and humidity. The index this past weekend peaked at a staggering 112 degrees, the Herald reported Tuesday.
The extreme weather has been the result of a perfect storm of fewer clouds, moist air coming from the southwest and the air sinking and warming, an occurrence known as a high pressure ridge, the Herald reported. Last summer’s unbearable temperatures were influenced by the El Niño phenomenon.
But scientists have made it clear: climate change is making these record-high temperatures and hotter summers more common. The whole planet has gotten warmer.
As Miami-Dade County takes the lead by planting more tree canopies (though that’s not going as planned, as the Herald reported) and having conversations about a green sustainable future, Florida has knee-capped many of those efforts, as well as efforts to deal with some effects of climate change.
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation this year that prohibits local governments from passing heat protections for outdoor workers. Another bill he signed last week deletes most references to climate change from state law, among other things.
Ironically, both laws will go into effect this summer, on July 1, while many of us brace for another season of potentially sweltering temperatures and the possibility of farm workers dying from excessive heat, as it reportedly happened in 2023. To give the governor credit, the state has invested millions of dollars in sea-level and flooding resilience projects and he even appointed a chief resilience officer. But Florida ignores that the long-term solution is to reduce carbon emissions, though we recognize that it takes more than one state to accomplish that.
House Bill 1645 removes the word “climate” from Florida statute in nine different instances, limits renewable energy production and likely expands the use of fossil fuels, according to the CLEO Institute. The legislation bans offshore windmill turbines and relaxes regulations of natural gas pipelines.
In some cases, the bill’s deletions of climate change seem innocuous. In others, those deletions are more far-reaching.
For example, Florida statute used to read: “The Legislature finds that... the impacts of global climate change can be reduced through the reduction of greenhouse gas emission.” That was removed and replaced with: “The purpose of the state’s energy policy is to ensure an adequate, reliable, and cost-effective supply of energy for the state...”
In some ways, the new law is a symbolic move that Florida is “rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots,” as DeSantis said last week. The state, for example, doesn’t attract much wind energy investment because of its lower wind speeds. Therefore, the practical effects of the HB 1645 might be minimal — though it could stifle future innovation if wind energy becomes more feasible in the state, the Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau reported.
House Bill 1645 is as much about energy policy as it is about using climate change to launch culture wars as DeSantis fights to stay relevant ahead of a potential presidential bid in 2028. Yet the consequences of a warmer planet are not in some hypothetical dystopian future.
Florida has always been vulnerable to hurricanes, but, thanks to warmer ocean waters, there’s evidence they are intensifying more quickly. A warmer ocean also prompted an unprecedented coral reef die-off last year, the Herald reported.
According to NASA: “Due to global warming, global climate models predict hurricanes will likely cause more intense rainfall and have an increased coastal flood risk due to higher storm surge caused by rising seas.”
Florida is already dealing with a property insurance crisis as premiums skyrocket and homeowners are dropped by their insurers. Our state leaders would rather ignore how “more intense rainfall” and “increased coastal flood,” especially in places like Miami Beach, could make that crisis worse.
Climate change denial — and the politicization of this real problem — has made inaction acceptable. How much longer can we pretend reality isn’t happening before living in Florida becomes too unbearable?
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Orlando Sentinel. May 23, 2024.
Editorial: Should Florida keep pouring money into the ocean to ‘fix’ storm-battered beaches??
The sands along Florida’s beaches are ever shifting. It’s particularly noticeable when powerful storms alter shorelines — such as when hurricanes Ian and Nicole clawed at the dunes in Wilbur-by-the-Sea, sending nearly a dozen homes tumbling into the sea. At times, storm-fueled waves render popular beaches unrecognizable overnight. Others see more gradual reduction, such as the slowly narrowing expanse of sand in Daytona Beach. It is, however, all part of nature’s plan. Sand might be rinsed away in one busy day, only to gradually return to the same spot over the course of years or even decades.
Not that people are content to accept that’s all part of a cycle we can’t control. Florida state and local governments have spent billions on beach-restoration projects — as TCPalm reporter Keith Burbank noted, Treasure Coast governments have spent well over $100 million during the last five years on beach-renourishment work.
Respectively, St. Lucie, Indian River and Martin counties spent $73.5 million, $28 million and $16.9 million during that time. Much of the money comes from state or federal grants, but some local funds are used, too.
Where does all that money go? Mostly into projects to transport sand from inland mines or the ocean floor to beaches that have experienced the heaviest losses.
It’s a little bit more complicated than it sounds. The sand used to buff up beaches must be similar to the kind it’s replacing. Also, there’s an ongoing need to monitor the shoreline, including reefs and sea turtle and bird nests.
It’s a never-ending battle — maintenance, as one beach-renourishment proponent once called it, as essential as mowing your lawn.
Still, sand that’s placed on Florida beaches today might be churning its way through the Gulf Stream toward Europe in a matter of days or weeks. Or it might shift only enough to create sandbars that imperil local navigation channels.
It’s fair to ask, why do our government officials keep doing this? This is a question that has been asked repeatedly over many years.
“I’d say it’s pretty much throwing money into the ocean,” Andy Brady, president of the Conservation Alliance of St. Lucie County, said in a TCPalm article from 2012. “It’s pretty much a Band-Aid. All the beach renourishments I’ve seen have lasted a while and, eventually, the sand washed away.”
Are we throwing good money after bad?
In a piece written less than two years ago, TCPalm columnist Laurence Reisman noted how Hurricane Nicole had essentially erased a lot of the work done on a $4.8 million Vero Beach renourishment project that was started in 2019.
Martin County’s Bathtub Beach, a popular spot for swimmers and snorkelers, is currently being restored at a projected cost of $7.1 million. That’s the same spot that had to be closed in 2020 for “repairs” due to erosion damage.
Some beaches — including Bathtub Beach and Bethune Beach in Volusia County — see this kind of work every three years in order to remain, well, a beach.
Is all of this spending up and down the coast really necessary? Tourism officials would tell you yes, absolutely it is, because beaches attract the visitors that keep the local economy humming. As noted in Burbank’s story, tourists — many of them beachgoers — reportedly spent $693.2 million in St. Lucie County during 2022 alone.
Tourism is important. However, it’s also an oversimplification to suggest all tourism spending would evaporate if our communities spent less on beach renourishment.
A national research paper mentioned in Burbank’s article says the federal government gets $230 in taxes for every dollar spent on renourishment projects. That sounds pretty impressive, but could that tax yield be even higher if beach-renourishment funds were spent more judiciously?
This isn’t to suggest local governments should halt all beach-renourishment work. It would be sensible to start performing cost-benefit analyses on these projects.
Instead of taking it on faith that every project is necessary and beneficial, why not approach the process with a bit of skepticism about the wisdom of continually butting heads with Mother Nature?
This is an election year. Candidates for political office often run on platforms that include plans to cut “fraud, waste and mismanagement.”
Fraud and mismanagement are often tough to spot, and one person’s “waste” is another person’s critical government service.
Beach renourishment seems like a line item in local budgets that could indeed use closer scrutiny, though.
Kids love playing in the sand at our local beaches. Yet when adults do the same, it tends to get expensive.
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Palm Beach Post. May 24, 2024.
Editorial: Florida legislature claims to prevent election cheating, but they just might’ve legalized it.
The only cure would be cultural change within the party rank and file that supports winning political competitions through persuasion rather than perversion.
It’s all about the fairness. The Florida legislature and governor change the election rules to prevent cheating, they tell us. If a good number of people can’t vote as a result, mostly Democratic-leaning Blacks, Hispanics, seniors or whatnot, that’s just a coincidence.
A federal judge in Tallahassee doesn’t see it that way, though. On May 15, Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker ruled that a new Florida provision that bans non-citizens from participating in voter registration drives is unconstitutional. The ruling is a welcome strike at repeated efforts by GOP partisans to game the system.
The provision, SB 7050, was approved by Florida’s legislature and signed into law in 2023 by Gov. Ron DeSantis. Its sponsors framed it as a way to keep third-party voter registration efforts honest. But there’s no data that demonstrates any level of registration fraud to warrant the burdens this measure imposes, let alone the penalties that could decimate the finances of groups that seek to build voter turnout and promote democracy.
The ruling, granting a permanent injunction against enforcing the citizenship requirement, came in Hispanic Federation et al v Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd et al, one of three similar cases that were combined, were tried in April and which await overall decisions. Judge Walker found the citizenship requirement violated the First and Fourteen Amendment protections related to free speech and association and voting rights.
The second case is led by the League of Women Voters of Florida. It opposes provisions that require third-party voter registration groups like them to provide receipts to applicants that provide the personal identification of the registration worker; reduce the days the organization has to turn in the applications; prevent the organizations from keeping registrants’ information to be able to remind them to vote; and require the organizations to re-register every general election cycle. Falling afoul of the personal information requirement would constitute constitute a 3rd degree felony; turning in applications late would carry fines as high as $250,000.
The third case, by the Florida State Conference of Branches and Youth Units of the NAACP et al, is similar to the League of Women Voters suit.
It’s the same old, same old, for the governor and like-minded lawmakers: Insist they must clean up a system that needs no cleaning, while coincidentally reducing the number of voters statistically likely to oppose their party at the polls.
Other examples: remapping northern Florida congressional districts to dilute the Black vote, reducing the number of minority districts from four to two, bending the paper-thin balance of power in Washington in Republicans’ favor; and erecting barriers to voting by ex-convicts, despite a public referendum that required restoring their rights.
The insidious bonus in the redistricting case is that even if these actions are to be found unconstitutional, they stay in place until the courts determine so, courts loaded with DeSantis judicial appointees. The last time the Florida GOP tried its redistricting shenanigans, in 2010, it took a number of election cycles before the courts shut them down, despite the crystal clear language of our fair elections law –– with no way to undo actions taken by improperly installed victors in the meantime.
“All facts point clearly to the conclusion that voter fraud is very rare,” Brent Ferguson, senior legal council for voting rights, for the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C. noted Tuesday. The CLC, a nonpartisan, nonprofit that advocates for voting rights, fair redistricting and ethics laws, represents the League of Women Voters of Florida in its case. “And while its important to protect against it, these laws are just a smoke screen,” Ferguson added. “They’re an effort to make it harder to vote, especially for certain people.”
Recent history has shown that even successful court challenges don’t reverse the damage and don’t stop Florida Republican leaders from trying again. The only cure would be cultural change within the party rank and file that supports winning political competitions through persuasion rather than perversion. We’re not holding our breath.
We urge the Hispanic Federation, League of Women Voters, NAACP and others to keep fighting the good fight. We urge the good citizens of Florida to support them.
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