The good and the bad of this year's primary

Good news about voting on Tuesday: no chads.

The bad news: Some tinkering by the Legislature has made our primary election confusing this year. Here are a few points worth mulling before Election Day.

THE WINNER TAKES ALL: If you've lived in Florida long, you know about runoff elections. When three or more people run for office in a September primary, and no one receives more than 50 percent of the vote, the top two finishers run again in October. That's a runoff.

But the Florida Legislature scuttled the runoff election this year for Democratic and Republican primaries.

So take a look at House District 51, which includes portions of Seminole, Pinellas Park, Largo, and South Pasadena. Three Republicans are running here, Dan Krassner, William Stieh and incumbent Rep. Leslie Waters. It's theoretically possible that someone could win this nomination with 33.4 percent of the vote.

Or for an even better example, look at the statewide race for attorney general. Four Democrats are running, and last week's St. Petersburg Times and Miami Herald poll showed seven of 10 Democrats did not know whom they wanted to vote for. That makes it hard to imagine the Democratic nominee earning even half of his party's vote.

And check out the three-way Republican race. The presumed attorney general front-runner, former Pinellas legislator Charlie Crist, is one of those candidates people either love or hate. He needs one third of the Republican vote, plus one, to defeat Locke Burt and Tom Warner.

When people defend runoff elections, they cite well-regarded politicians who won their party's nomination after coming from behind in the runoff, such as Lawton Chiles and Reubin Askew.

If Crist becomes attorney general, you can bet his opponents will blame it on the lack of a runoff.

THE WINNER DOES NOT TAKE ALL: Now, forget the above.

Forget it, that is, during judicial and School Board races. Because runoffs survive in these non-partisan campaigns.

For example, three candidates are running in two different races for Pinellas-Pasco circuit judge positions. If no one gets more than 50 percent in one of these races, the top two vote-getters in that race will face each other again in a runoff. This runoff will be Nov. 5, the day of the general election.

You can just about count on a runoff in the School Board District 4 race, which features five candidates.

School Board candidates are considered non-partisan, but that's easy to forget because they ran as Democrats and Republicans as recently as 1998.

It's also easy to forget because the Republican Party has sent voters a flier titled "Your Republican Candidates for Pinellas County School Board."

YOU MAY NOT GET TO VOTE IN THE FUN RACES: If you're a registered Democrat, you can vote for Daryl L. Jones, Bill McBride or Janet Reno for governor. If you're a registered Republican, you can vote for Republican candidates in, say, the attorney general race.

If you're not, you can't.

Of course, you can change your party affiliation, but it's too late for this election.

In Pinellas County, 122,906 voters are registered as independents or in smaller political parties. That's more than one in five voters.

These people can't vote in the Democratic or Republican primary races, but they shouldn't stay home. Every registered voter can cast ballots in the judicial and School Board races.

THE NEW VOTING MACHINES purchased in Pinellas County are on display at three supervisor of elections offices: 501 First Ave N, St. Petersburg; the County Courthouse, 315 Court St., Clearwater; the Election Service Center, 14255 49th St. N, Largo area.

You can check them out Monday. In fact, because of a new law, you can actually vote in those three offices Monday instead of going to your normal polling place on Tuesday.

For more information about that, call 464-3551. And for more about the new machines, look at the Supervisor of Elections Web site, www.co.pinellas.fl.us/soe/.

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