FLORIDA DEMOCRATIC PARTY JOINS CALLS FOR GOVERNOR DESANTIS TO CALL SPECIAL ELECTIONS

On July 27 and 28, Democrats in House Districts 94, 88 and in Senate District 33 submitted their irrevocable resignations from their seats. By law, Gov. Ron DeSantis is required to call special elections to fill those vacancies. As of this date, he has not done so. It has been 84 days since those vacancies were announced. By comparison —as noted in a lawsuit filed by residents from those districts to compel the Governor to call the elections— between 1999 and 2020 there were 65 vacancies at different points in time and on average it took the sitting governor 7.6 days to call for an special election. Ben Tyler, the Florida Democratic Party’s general counsel, issued the following statement.

“The Resign to Run law was designed to avoid a domino effect of empty seats caused by legislators running for different offices. Governor DeSantis is shirking his responsibility and potentially leaving hundreds of thousands of Floridians without representation in the process. Floridians in House Districts 88 and 94, and Senate District 33 have a right to equal representation.

“The Governor should call a special primary election on January 11, 2022, concurrently with the congressional special general election. The Governor should similarly call a special general election by February 15, 2022. We know that the Supervisor of Elections offices are capable of holding elections on these dates and further delay is simply unacceptable. It should not take citizens filing a lawsuit for the Governor to do what he is required to – it’s long past time to stop playing politics and schedule these elections.”