Joe Negron Wins in First District Court of Appeal

The Republican Party of Florida won a court battle on the Joe Negron signs.

Elections supervisors in Mark Foley's former district received permission from a Tallahassee appeals court Friday to post notices stating a vote for the disgraced Republican congressman will go to replacement candidate Joe Negron.

The Florida Democratic Party said it would not appeal the decision, ending a two-week court battle.

"Confused voters should not be required to guess as to how their vote will be counted, or be forced to question poll workers and rely on the potentially inconsistent, incomplete, or partial information," the appeals court stated.

Writing for a three-judge panel, District Judge James Wolf said Florida law allows poll workers to display informational notices, so long as they are impartial and do not favor a specific candidate. The unanimous ruling reversed an Oct. 28 decision barring the signs.

I posted my thoughts on the previous ruling at Peer Review.

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G, I want Negron to lose and think he should be on the ballot. It's a seperate issue, but the 21 day law is silly. What if a candidate dies.

The issues of signs, there is this from Ferris's ruling.

"The Legislature could have adopted various options; it could have required that the name of the new nominee be included on the ballot, or could have mandated the posting of a notice informing electors of the replacement, as Kentucky Legislature did."

The thing about the sign is one candidate feels it will give an advantage to the other. If I'm Tim Mahoney then I'll demand for signs if Negron gets them. It becomes a partisan issue of fairness. Seriously, Negron and Mahoney have received much media attention because of FoleyGate. If people haven't heard of either them now then they never will.

The Florida Legislature needs to address the ballot issue if a candidate drops out or dies. Reprinting the ballots is hard and this state doesn't have a great track record for elections. (Dead people voting in Miami.) Deal with the problem fairly.

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A Reuters article states that the First District Court of Appeal ruling means that if the Negron signs go up; others candidates in the race must also be on the sign. That is fair. Mr. G and myself were in agreement on that point. Now we get get onto the election. Hopefully, with no more hassles.

What the court did was give the 16th discrist a temporary injunction. Meaning, that for this one instance they could place the signs. The bad news for Republicans is that Secretary of State Sue Cobb received another smack down.

In applying these standards, we determine that the email notice provided by the
Secretary of State on October 3, 2006, failed to meet the impartiality requirements
and, therefore, affirm the trial court’s order precluding posting of, or delivery to,
voters of said notice within the polling places of the relevant Congressional district.

Where the court took exception is Cobb's notice did not mention Democrat Tim Mahoney or independent Emmie Ross. Whoops, Cobb did it again.

What the ruling came down to:

Foley’s name will appear on the ballot but will be a placeholder for Negron’s,
creating a complexity in voting that must be made known to voters to enable them to
cast an informed and intelligent ballot. Without some explanation, a ballot that omits the name of the legal candidate leads to doubt and uncertainty about the true will of the people.

The Court wanted to take the burden off of Election official having to explain the Foley ballot. They believe that may lead to partisan opinion.

I have no problems with this ruling. And this is coming from someone who wants Negron to lose.