Another presidential election, another national embarrassment. Florida Sham, The Sequel. But this time, perversely enough, it might have been worth it.
* You could make a case that a voter-suppression cabal translated into voter-backlash results.
* You could also make the case that efforts to reform Florida voting now have the ultimate mandate. No state–certainly not one that aspires to increase its competitiveness and ratchet up its business credibility and profile–can afford Third World labeling on Election Day. Avoiding further national and international disgrace is surely a bipartisan issue. Surely.
* Now everybody else knows what we know. Rick Scott is not merely an economically counterproductive, unpopular ideologue who was shunned by the Mitt Romney campaign, he is also manifestly incompetent, duplicitous and arrogant. The way he defended the election debacle was less impressive than his stonewalling, Medicare-fraud deposition. He never even apologized to South Florida voters who queued up on Tuesday and wound up voting on Wednesday. Even some Tea Partiers had to be wincing at the self-inflicted “Flori-duh” refrain that was regretfully recycled. His problematic re-election chances have likely tanked.
* The chances of somebody–other than Charlie Crist or a member of the McBride household–taking on and defeating Scott have now increased. As in former Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio, who previously served as Hillsborough County supervisor of elections and president of the State Association of Supervisors of Elections. She’s speaking out authoritatively on the need for a statewide review of voting–and is culling key individuals to brainstorm on reforms.
This is an issue that resonates personally with Iorio. Not only has she supervised elections that didn’t draw detractors, she has studied voting implications–as a civil rights dynamic–when earning her master’s degree in American history at USF.
She’s a well-regarded, popular ex-mayor of an I-4 Corridor anchor city with more yet to do in the public-service arena. Now she has a statewide forum, if not vehicle. It’s what she has been lacking if she wanted to make a gubernatorial run against an ever-more vulnerable incumbent in 2014.