For an independent Secretary of State

OUR OPINION: FLORIDA'S TOP ELECTION OFFICIALS SHOULD BE ABOVE POLITICS

Opinion  Miami Herald   06 March 2005

Gov. Jeb Bush and state election officials have gotten off to a bad start in an attempt to rewrite Florida's election laws. Two draft proposals, written by the governor's office and Secretary of State Glenda Hood, would shift power to the state from local election officials, including the authority to file criminal charges against local supervisors who don't follow the rules. That's not a good idea, and it shouldn't be allowed to stand.

The good news is that the proposals are just drafts and there is ample time for Gov. Bush and the Legislature to make changes. Both the governor and legislative leaders have said that changes to the proposals are necessary. Ms. Hood stumbled badly by not getting buy-in from key legislative leaders and local election supervisors. It's no surprise that supervisors, who hold a constitutional office, fear some changes would strip their powers. The supervisors are highly offended, and rightly so, to be told that they as elected officials would answer to an (unelected) appointed official.

Therein lies the biggest flaw in the proposals. The person who administers overall election policy for the state should be independent, nonpartisan and demonstrably unbiased. The last two secretaries of state, Ms. Hood and Katherine Harris, have run the office as if it were an extension of the governor's office. Whatever changes in election law legislators ultimately adopt and, yes, some are needed their top priority should be to make the Secretary of State's position independent and nonpartisan. That one change, more than all of the changes recommended in the massive proposals, would do more to instill confidence and promote accuracy in state elections.

Many of the recommended changes are necessary to create uniform standards across the state for voter registration, rules and procedures for early voting, for handling provisional ballots, etc. We could, however, quibble with some of them and will in subsequent editorials. Ms. Hood says the changes also will help Florida meet terms of the federal Help America Vote Act by next January. Fine.

But lawmakers should be judicious in their approach to these proposals. The rules need tweaking, not a full-scale overhaul. By most accounts, the 2004 election the first big test of reforms spurred by the fiasco of 2000 was a success. Electronic voting replaced paper ballots and chads hanging, pregnant or dimpled were a distant memory.

Lawmakers should look to assign to Tallahassee responsibility for issues that demand statewide uniformity rules for voter registration, early voting, absentee ballots, for example and leave to local supervisors the ability to verify voter rolls, administer elections, and such. The 2004 elections showed that Florida has come a long way since the disaster of 2000. The approach now must be to, first, do no harm, then look to ensure fairness and accuracy.