FLORIDA POLITICS
Since 2002, daily Florida political news and commentary

 

UPDATE: Every morning we review and individually digest Florida political news articles, editorials and punditry. Our sister site, FLA Politics was selected by Campaigns & Elections as one of only ten state blogs in the nation
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Welcome To Florida Politics

Thanks for visiting. On a semi-daily basis we scan Florida's major daily newspapers for significant Florida political news and punditry. We also review the editorial pages and political columnists/pundits for Florida political commentary. The papers we review include: the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, Palm Beach Post, Naples News, Sarasota Herald Tribune, St Pete Times, Tampa Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Tallahassee Democrat, and, occasionally, the Florida Times Union; we also review the political news blogs associated with these newspapers.

For each story, column, article or editorial we deem significant, we post at least the headline and link to the piece; the linked headline always appears in quotes. We quote the headline for two reasons: first, to allow researchers looking for the cited piece to find it (if the link has expired) by searching for the original title/headline via a commercial research service. Second, quotation of the original headline permits readers to appreciate the spin from the original piece, as opposed to our spin.

Not that we don't provide spin; we do, and plenty of it. Our perspective appears in post headlines, the subtitles within the post (in bold), and the excerpts from the linked stories we select to quote; we also occasionally provide other links and commentary about certain stories. While our bias should be immediately apparent to any reader, we nevertheless attempt to link to every article, column or editorial about Florida politics in every major online Florida newspaper.

 

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The Blog for Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Dyer

    The St. Pete Times nails it today:
    The 1998 statute (chapter 104.047) grew out of an outrageous Miami election scandal in which people were openly paid for each absentee vote they delivered for a certain candidate, said former state Sen. Jack Latvala of Pinellas County. As interpreted in the Dyer case, the law could snag any paid campaign worker who has anything to do with absentee ballots. "None of us (legislators) meant that," [the bill's original sponsor in the Legislature, former state Sen. Jack] Latvala said.

    The applicable law is only three sentences long. It says it is illegal for anyone to be paid for "distributing, ordering, requesting, collecting, delivering, or otherwise physically possessing absentee ballots." Yet isn't that precisely what both major parties and a variety of interest groups do every election when they send out absentee ballot request forms and even deliver the marked ballots to the elections office? ...

    Is it okay for volunteers to request or collect absentee ballots but not paid consultants? If so, how does that protect the sanctity of ballots?

    Maybe it isn't wrong to make Dyer a test case for a vague law. But what other candidate is the state going to pursue? We'd particularly like to hear Hood's thoughts on this matter.
    "A test case?".

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