A crowdedbetkubi online casino, winner-take-all race on the ballot this August is exposing an apparent loophole in state laws created to prevent candidates from party shopping, with a former Republican positioned to possibly win a Democratic primary for a state House seat in a liberal district.
The candidate, Wancito Francius, changed his voter registration to Democrat last July, about six weeks too late to comply with a state law intended to prevent last-minute party switches ahead of elections. But Francius got on the ballot anyway as a candidate in the House District 107 primary, and there may be nothing his opponents can do about it.
Although Francius is ineligible to run as a Democrat under the letter of the law, a Florida judge determined in 2022 that the courts have no mechanism to remove candidates from the ballot in such cases due to vagueness of state statutes — a precedent that one elections expert told the Miami Herald was “an invitation for candidates to lie.”
No one has accused Francius of nefarious intent. He has toggled back and forth between the Republican and Democratic parties in recent years while running unsuccessfully for local and state office, most recently a failed bid to win the District 107 Democratic primary in 2022.
But in a race with six candidates, his campaign will ultimately influence the outcome, whether he wins or not.
“I don’t think it’s fair if he’s allowed to stay” in the race, said Christine Sanon-Jules Olivo, one of Francius’ five Democratic opponents on the Aug. 20 ballot. “He should withdraw.”
Francius and the lawThe dynamics of the north Miami-Dade district heavily favor Democrats.
More than half the nearly 100,000 voters in the area, stretching from Miami Gardens to North Miami Beach, are registered with the party, while fewer than 13,000 are Republicans. So, it was likely beneficial for Francius to switch his voter registration, which county records show he did on July 21, 2023.
Florida law requires candidates to be a member of the party they seek to represent in office for 365 days before the beginning of the qualifying period for that party’s primary election, and to affirm that status in a sworn statement. The law — which the Legislature strengthened after authorities alleged that ringer candidates appeared in three state Senate races in 2020 — is meant to ensure elected officials represent their party’s political values while in office.
In other words, if Francius wanted to run as a Democrat, he needed to register as one a full year ahead of the qualifying period that began June 10, 2024, for candidates running in this fall’s election season.
Elections Department records show Francius easily missed the deadline. But he swore in his qualifying papers that he’d been a Democrat for a full year.
Francius, who has been registered as a Republican, Democrat and independent at different times over the last decade while unsuccessfully pursuing elected office, insists that he is eligible to run. He disputed during an interview that he missed the deadline despite Elections Department records showing he was more than a month late.
“I’ve been a Democrat … I believe since 2019 or 2020,” he said the first time he was reached for comment by a Herald reporter.
After reviewing an audit from the Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections, which shows all changes to the registration for a specific voter, Francius continued to question its validity. In a second interview with the Herald, he continued to insist that he has been a registered Democrat for years.
According to the audit, Francius first registered as a Republican in 2013 and remained one until he filed as a Democrat in 2016. In 2018, he registered without party affiliation. In 2021, he switched back to a Democrat and in 2022 registered as a Republican until going back to Democrat on July 21, 2023, over a month after the qualifying deadline.
It will likely be up to his five opponents or the Democratic Party to try to remove him from the ballot, since the state doesn’t enforce its own law.
The Legislature made clear in 2011 that a filing officer who processes candidate paperwork serves a “ministerial function in reviewing qualifying papers” and “may not determine whether the contents of the qualifying papers are accurate.” The change was meant to lessen the burden placed on the administrative workers who churn through a deluge of documents on deadline.
A key legal rulingEven if Francius’ opponents take the case to court, a lawsuit will be a difficult challenge as well. In 2022, based partially on the 2011 change to state law, a Florida appeals court in the Panhandle declared in a case called Jones v. Schiller that it didn’t have the authority to disqualify a candidate who broke the 365-day party affiliation rule, even if they lied about it on their sworn statement.
In her written opinion, First District Court of Appeal Judge Rachel Nordby added that the statute governing the party oath did not “speak at all to disqualification of a candidate if those sworn affirmations turn out to be untrue.” She said state lawmakers hadn’t empowered the courts to remove candidates from the ballot.
“Although the Legislature could have included explicit enforcement language in this statute, it didn’t,” wrote Nordby, who was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2019.
That interpretation broke with decades of precedent, according to Tallahassee attorney and state elections expert Mark Herron.
“It is an invitation for candidates to lie,” said Herron, who represented parties in a separate case in 2022 that also undermined the long-standing precedent.
Prior to Nordby’s 2022 ruling, Herron said “people were able to actually file a lawsuit that challenged the veracity or the completeness of qualifying papers. And courts acted on those and removed candidates from the ballot.”
Now, a party-affiliation case in Florida is essentially “unsettled law,” said Barry Richard, a Tallahassee attorney who practices election law. But he said that if a case were challenged outside of the Panhandle area and ended up in front of a different appeals court that issued a different ruling, the state Supreme Court could review the conflicting opinions and issue more decisive guidance.
Otherwise, it’s up to the Legislature to change the law and make it clear that violating the 365-day party affiliation rule is grounds for disqualification from the ballot, Richard said.
Earlier this year, two Democratic state lawmakers did just that, introducing identical bills that would disqualify a candidate if a circuit court determined they did not comply with the 365-day rule. Those bills were never heard.
This story was originally published July 1, 2024, 5:30 AM.
Ana Claudia Chacin
Miami Herald
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