Category Archives: Florida

County map of Florida 2022 Senate results by Aldinz333, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Now’s about when you would expect serious candidates for 2024 Senate election to let it be known they have an interest.  For legal reasons, it often makes sense to delay a formal declaration until much later, but you would expect to see subtle online campaigns, maybe an exploratory committee or three. Yet on the Democratic side it seems awfully quiet.

Although far from great, the general political picture is more mixed than it might seem:

• Bad: Rick Scott, the incumbent, has basically unlimited funds to spend thanks to having ripped off Medicare before running for office.
• Good: Even with all that money, Rick Scott won by only 0.12% in 2018.
• Bad: Florida has trended strongly Republican since then.
• Good: FiveThirtyEight rates Florida as one of the two most likely Democratic pickups in 2024 (along with Ted Cruz’s seat in Texas).
• Bad: FiveThirtyEight only rates it as a “Silver” opportunity — there are no “Gold” or “Platinum” ones listed for Democrats!
• Good: Both Trump and DeSantis live here, making a target-rich environment.
• Bad: Both Trump and DeSantis live here, potentially increasing the GOP turnout if either is on the Presidential ballot.
• Good: President Biden has justly targeted Sen. Scott for his bone-headed attack on Social Security and Medicare, and would probably stump on this for a strong Democratic candidate.  Rick Scott is vulnerable on this.
• Bad: the Florida state Democratic party is a total mess.  And there’s not much a bench of plausible Senate candidates.

That last point is in my mind the key: I can’t think of any Democrats with a statewide profile who’d be a plausible candidate.  Val Demings lost to Rubio, and I’ve seen no sign she wants another Senate race. That means the best Democratic candidate will be someone with a strong local base. I don’t follow local politics outside South Florida to even have an idea what the field is–which is a sign of the problem.

Thoughts, anyone?

I went to vote at my local polling place at around 2pm. It was not deserted, but it was nearly empty. As I entered, a lady gave me a form, and asked me to hand it to the poll workers. It showed my time of arrival, and had a blank for when I got to the voter table — which proved to be about 60 seconds later.

I explained my story to the nice lady at the table. She scanned my driver’s license and looked me up in her system. “It’s here!” she said. I thought that meant my vote had miraculously arrived in the 45 minutes between when I last checked and when I turned up. But, no, turned out it meant that it showed they had sent it to me. But, as I explained, although I had returned it, it still was not received. And the system confirmed that too.

At that, they printed out a new ballot receipt for me, handed me the flimsy paper and a large ballot, and off I went to vote it.

I was in and out in under ten minutes, including parking.

The only slightly odd thing about the experience is that every other time I’ve voted, outside the polling place there has been a forest of signs for the various candidates, and multiple often competing campaign workers offering leaflets for their candidates.

This time, there were zero signs and zero people.

Maybe they were all off phoning and texting people: I got three calls and four texts reminding me to vote or asking me to vote for a candidate between 9am and 2pm today. So maybe it’s virtual campaigning now? Probably beats standing in the sun…

As of this morning, the Elections Dept. still has not received my ballot.

I was glad therefore to find instructions as to what I should do in the Miami-Dade Voter Information Guide/FAQ. At page 11 is says:

Surrendered at the Polls on Election Day – A voter who prefers to vote in person may surrender a voted or un-voted mail ballot to the voter’s precinct on Election Day. The returned ballot will be marked “canceled” by the election board. A voter who desires to vote in person, but does not return the ballot to the precinct, may vote only under the following conditions:

• The election board confirms the voter’s mail ballot has not been received.
• If the election board cannot determine whether the voter’s mail ballot has been received, the voter may vote a provisional ballot.

Voters cannot vote by submitting their Vote by Mail ballot at their precinct. It must be surrendered.

That seems clear enough: if by tomorrow they don’t have it, go to my polling place, and they will either let me vote, or give me a provisional ballot.

But I’m never going to vote by mail again if I can avoid it–I’m dumping that ballot in a drop box.