ORLANDO, Fla. – Before Florida voters go to the polls for the midterm elections in November, there is another big election in August: the Florida Statewide Primary on Aug. 18.
This will include any party primaries for U.S. Senate, U.S. House, Florida’s governor and cabinet seats, and state legislature seats.
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Voters will also decide in nonpartisan races, like school board races. Depending on the county, county commission races will also be nonpartisan. These particular elections are open to all voters, regardless of party affiliation.
However, if you want to vote in any of the party primaries in Florida, you have to be a member of a political party. That’s because Florida is a closed primary state.
Primary elections happen when a political party has more than one candidate running for the same office. For instance, the race for Florida governor has 11 Republican candidates vying to be the party’s nominee.
In some states, you don’t have to be a member of a party to vote in the primary. That’s not the case in Florida. Here, Democrats vote in Democratic primaries, Republicans in Republican primaries, and so on.
Still, if you want to vote in a specific party primary, you just change your party affiliation.
You can do this up to 29 days before any election. For the statewide primary on Aug. 18, the deadline to change your party affiliation would be July 20.
To change your party affiliation, go to RegistertoVoteFlorida.gov and update your voter registration information.
You will need a Florida driver’s license or state ID to do so.
You can also contact your county supervisor of elections office.
Why it matters
Say you live in a district where the majority of voters lean toward one political party over another. An incumbent is facing a party primary, and whoever wins that primary will face candidates who are not likely to win given the district’s demographics.
Being able to vote in the primary gives you more of a say over who will take that political office.
A good example is the 2020 election for Orange-Osceola State Attorney. The race had a crowded field of Democrats and one lesser-known No Party Affiliate candidate. The odds were pretty good that a Democrat was going to win in the general election, given the demographics in the two counties.
Monique Worrell won the Democratic primary for Orange-Osceola state attorney and went on to win the general election.
Only Democratic voters got to pick which candidate would face the NPA candidate in November and likely win the general election.
If an election is important to you, you may want to choose a political party before the primary in order to have more of a say.
The loophole
There is a way to open a party primary to all voters.
If you have an election where only people from one political party have decided to run for an office, the election becomes open to every voter. This is called a universal primary.
The winner of this universal primary wins the office they were campaigning for.
This happens occasionally with state legislature or county seats.
But there is a loophole that closes a primary: get a write-in candidate to run for that election.
It costs a write-in candidate nothing to run; their name doesn’t even go on the ballot. But since there is a candidate with a different political affiliation in the race, there will be no universal primary, only primaries open to political party members.
This tactic has been used by some factions to close voters out of elections. As election officials have pointed out before, statistically, write-in candidates don’t win in county, state or federal elections, and many even drop out of the race before election day.
There have been several reports in recent years where write-in candidates with ties to a party candidate will run, thus insulating that candidate from the wider community of voters with a closed primary race.
Despite calls over the last few years to close the write-in loophole, Florida lawmakers have not done anything about it.
Again, if you wish to vote in a party primary this August, you have until July 20 to change your party affiliation. Head to Register to Vote Florida.gov to update your registration.