Bottom Line: Florida’s Primary Day is four weeks from today and yesterday marked the deadline to register vote in order to participate in it. That makes this a good time to hit the reset button on what’s actually to be decided in Florida’s August primaries. Especially with so many new Floridians having joined us over the past couple of years. Florida’s August primaries are generally the most misunderstood. Commonly confusion stems from Florida being a closed primary state, meaning only registered partisans may vote in party primary elections – that often leads to registered NPA’s thinking that they’re not eligible to vote in the August primary elections. That’s not the case. And that’s because non-partisan elections will be decided in this election. Every registered voter in South Florida will have elections on their ballot regardless of party registration. And specific to your question regarding school board races, yes – they're on the August ballots to be decided this August.
The three types of non-partisan races appearing on the ballot of South Floridians are county commissioner races in select districts, judicial races and school board races. The best place to start in figuring out what’s on your ballot is with a sample ballot. Election supervisors have sample ballots available to immediately review online. Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach County. As an example, on my ballot as a registered partisan I have these races on my ballot...
Partisan:
- Congressional Representative
- Agriculture Commissioner
- State Representative
Non-Partisan:
- Circuit Judge
- County Court Judge
- School Board
So, in my case half of the races on my ballot are non-partisan that will be decided in August. Historically, seemingly in part due to confusion about who can vote in what, turnout for the August primaries has trailed the general election turnout by greater than half. In 2018’s midterm’s, which included the highest midterm turnout in 22 years in Florida, turnout was 63% in the general election but just 27% in the August primary elections.
Given the highest level of attention I’ve ever seen aimed specifically at school board races, it’s my hope we’ll see significant improvement in turnout for the August primaries. Better still would be record turnout. The number to beat is 54% of eligible voters set in 1958 – however just getting back to 30% turnout would be something of a milestone. That hasn’t been done since 1990. Though the Biden administration has certainly challenged my long held saying, this still remains generally true... Every election has consequences, though it's often those which happen closest to you that have the biggest impact in your daily life. And many of those elections are on our ballots this August. I implore everyone to get informed about the races and the candidates involved in your district, and to vote for your convictions.
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Today’s entry: Submitted via talkback regarding what races will be on August primary ballots.
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