Politicks

Rick Scott is Governor Because

South Floridians Are Too Lazy to

Vote

By Kyle Munzenrieder, Thursday, Nov. 4, 2010 @ 1:44PM

Comments (26)

?What the hell did you have going on Tuesday where you couldn’t vote? Yes, I’m talking to you, South Florida. Because a stronger turn out in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach which happen to be the most populace counties in the state and all voted super strongly for Alex Sink might have tipped the razor thin margin in her favor. Instead, Rick Scott-loving North Florida, which to be honest never has anything better to do than vote, turned up at the poll en masse. News flash people: Voting is important.

Here in Miami-Dade 57 percent of voters selected Sink, compared to only 42 percent for Scott. Voter turn out was only a pitiful 41.33 percent.

In Palm Beach the split was 58-40 for Sink, and there was a somewhat healthier turn out of 46 percent.

And in Broward, the bluest of Florida’s counties, the split was a whopping 65-34 for Sink. Though voter turnout was the lowest in South Florida with only 40.17 percent of voters trucking it to the polls, and not all of them even bothered to vote for Governor. That was the second lowest turn out of any county in the state. Way to go Broward, the rest of blue-leaning Florida depends on you and you blew it.

All three counties are below predicted state-wide voter turn out, and a strong push from Republican strongholds in North Florida helped Scott walk away with the election.

Nationally, voter turn out was expected to be up by about 3 percent thanks mainly to an energized Republican base.

Adding to our list of “What the Hell is wrong with the Florida Democratic Party” maybe we should add an apparently broken Get Out The Vote strategy in South Florida.

Comments (26)

1)  Michael E. Arth says:

The Florida Democratic Party did this to themselves by freezing out me and other candidates from the primary and anointing the lackluster, center-right, corporatist Sink. Brian Moore, a socialist coming in late on the primary ballot with no money got 23% of the Democrats’ vote, which gives some indication of how unhappy the Dems were with the Politburo-style coronation of Sink by the party.

There are two other important elements to this.

1. The two parties would rather lose an election by insisting on keeping the antiquated winner-take-all system, which creates spoilers, than have a fair election. We could end spoilers immediately with ranked choice voting, like civilized countries use, but the duopoly is against it.

2. Take money out of electoral politics through highly regulated and limited public campaign financing that also eliminates 527s, PACs and paid lobbyists. In this case, the corporate-owned media is also against reform because it would mean less campaign advertising.

The two parties have a stranglehold on our government and these reforms would weaken their power, so don’t expect them to do anything to help the American people have representative government or rational policies.

The one potentially good thing that has come from an un-indicted conspirator’s purchase of the governorship and winning with less than a majority, is that for the next four years we will be reminded every day of how much we need to reform our electoral system.

Michael E. Arth, Thursday, November 4, 2010, 2:35 PM