Sen. Ring (D-FL) sponsored effort to move FL primary date up: "I have absolutely no regrets."

[Emit]

"I think we have successfully blown up this antiquated primary process...I have absolutely no regrets."

... The Florida effort to move the date was sponsored by a Democrat, state Sen. Jeremy Ring, also of Broward, who remains unapologetic about his role. "I think we have successfully blown up this antiquated primary process," he said in a phone interview last week. "I have absolutely no regrets." ...

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/10/30/florida /

... Ring said that even with the boycott, Florida Democrats are no worse off than in past primaries.

"Back then, the nominees were already decided by the time our primary came around, so the candidates would come here to raise money but not to campaign for our votes," he said.

"So what are they doing now? The same thing. We're no worse - if anything, we're better."

"My hope is we've blown up the whole primary system," Ring said. "It would be the biggest legacy we'll get from this legislation." ...

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/jan/21/me-primary-resu...

... Mr. Ring said the Senate would most "likely" endorse the leap to Jan. 29 by the time the legislative session ends in May. The Senate’s current bill calls for moving the primary to Feb. 19, but Mr. Ring said that date was serving as a placeholder while lawmakers debate the issue.

"Right now it looks like Jan. 29 would be more favorable," he said from Tallahassee. "One thing you can be sure of is that Florida will be relevant during the primaries." ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/us/politics/23florida...


Ring was celebrating with Crist when Crist signed the bill:

Here's the press release from Governor Crist's signing ceremony in West Palm Beach May 21.

...He was joined at the bill signing ceremony by Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Arthur Anderson, Congressman Robert Wexler, bill sponsors Representatives David Rivera (R-Miami) and Dorothy Hukill (R-Port Orange) and Senators Lee Constantine (R-Altamonte Springs) and Jeremy Ring (D-Margate) and other legislators...

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/238312.php

"Getting a national 'cat fund' will be stronger than getting 210 convention delegates."

... Sen. Jeremy Ring, D-Margate, said that even without Democratic delegates — and only half the GOP delegates — at stake, "it's going to mean everything" for a frontrunner going into the coast-to-coast primaries and caucuses a week after Florida.

"I'm confident we're going to know the nominees after Feb. 5, and a lot of that will have to do with what happens in Florida," said Ring. "The reason I pushed the bill as hard as I did is, it's imperative that candidates start talking about issues important to Florida, which has happened. Getting a national 'cat fund' will be stronger than getting 210 convention delegates."

Creation of a national catastrophe fund to help states with massive hurricanes or killer earthquakes was not mentioned much in the first four states with primaries and caucuses. But Crist asked all visiting Republicans about it.

http://www.rpof.org/article.php?id=236

Ring predicts the delegates will be seated:

... State Sen. Jeremy Ring, D-Fort Lauderdale, who sponsored the bill that moved the primary, predicted his party will relent and seat the Michigan and Florida delegations. Democratic candidates have already offended party activists by not campaigning in those states, and Ring said neither Clinton nor Obama can afford to write them off.

"Whoever is the nominee has to come back to Florida in November," said Ring. "They're going to have to make it good with Florida, and the quickest, easiest way to make it good with Florida is to seat the delegation." ...

http://tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200880...

Lastly, and equally important, this bill was a legislative train. The Sierra Club explains further:

Democracy and Environment:
2007 Paper Trail mixed with bad citizen initiative language

Our Position: monitor
Bill Number: HB537/SB1174
Sponsor: Senators Constantine, Dockery, Villalobos and Rep. Hukill
Legislative Session: 2007

5/21/07 Governor Crist signed the bill into law. Here is our letter we delivered to the Governor:

May 19, 2007
...

Dear Governor Crist,

The following organizations appreciate your support and commitment to securing funding for paper ballot voting machines for all Florida voters, especially those in the fifteen counties where the touchscreen machines currently exist. We understand you intend to sign House Bill 537 into law next week, but we have some concerns about other provisions in the bill that we would like to share with you.

The citizens of Florida deserve to have their vote counted when they show up to vote on election day and they also deserve the right amend our constitution through the citizen initiative process without the additional hurdles and barriers contained in HB537. We agree with your original goal to replace touchscreen voting machines with paper ballot optical scan machines, however HB537 goes much further than that. The legislation before you makes numerous changes to election laws that were added on at the last minute and should have been more fully debated. In fact, we would urge you to convene a blue ribbon panel to review Florida’s elections laws and its enforcement mechanisms. The panel would review the new laws adopted this year and recommend changes to be considered by the legislature.

Here are a number of concerns that we have with the new legislation:

*Section 48 of the bill would limit the number of investigations that could be undertaken by the Elections Commission; (See Miami Herald, 5.15.2007, “Elections panel leader oppose part of Voting bill.”) Requiring that you have to have personal knowledge of an election law violation before you can file a complaint with the Elections Commission will mean many possible violation will go uninvestigated. This provision will make our election laws much harder to enforce.

*Sections 1-2 of the bill stifles voter registration efforts by grassroots organizations and strips key voter protections. The language addressing third party voter registration efforts will impact an ongoing court case in which similar restrictions that were passed in 2005 have been enjoined from being enforced. While the new language reduces the penalties that can be imposed on third party groups doing voter registration, it is still too restrictive and will likely mean that some well intentioned grassroots organizations will cease their voter registration efforts for fear of being penalized.

*Section 25 imposes new restrictions against citizen initiative petition drives and includes an onerous and expensive new process for gathering petition revocations. Under this new process, citizens who had signed a petition would be singled out and lobbied to subsequently “Revoke” the original petition signature. This new revocation process will create a cottage industry of companies who specialize in collecting petition revocations and could result in citizens being harassed to sign revocation forms in their own homes. It will also create a burdensome new workload for our county Supervisors of Elections.

This 77 page bill became a legislative train for various other pieces of legislation, most of which were never discussed and had not been filed as separate bills. The final bill looks very little like the original HB 537 which passed the House floor on March 21 by a vote of 115-1. The bill now makes changes in 52 Florida Statutes, ranging across 13 different chapters of Florida law. We respectfully argue this is not a good way to write election law in Florida. And while we do support the change to paper ballots which was fully debated and discussed in committee, we believe the other changes included in this bill deserve to be reviewed by a blue ribbon panel that will take a more comprehensive and thorough approach.

Thank you for your leadership and your consideration of these basic public policy issues.

Florida Chapter Sierra Club...

~snip~

So, is this 80-page bill a Legislative TRAIN? You betcha. Parts of this bill (there are 57 “sections”) came from various bills and amendments from both the Senate and House; the final bill looks very little like the original HB 537 which passed the House floor on March 21 by a vote of 115-1; and, for example, when the bill was substituted for SB 960, which had already become a train in the Senate, the legislation faced 20 floor amendments during the last six days of session. The bill now changes or creates 52 sections of Florida Statutes, ranging across 13 different Chapters of Florida law. ...

This bill makes all future initiative campaigns very difficult to even put new changes on the ballot anywhere in Florida (besides proposed constitutional amendments). This restrictive new structure will apply to Florida Hometown Democracy, as well as any future reemergence of Redistricting Initiatives, or clarifications or strengthening of Constitutional Rights, citizen-sponsored proposals for changes in government financing or election opportunities, etc. The so called good government bill changed dramatically for the worse on a 3-2 vote on April 24 when Senators Fasano, Diaz de la Portilla and Webster voted to use the paper trail bill against citizen initiatives. ...

More detail that chronicles how the final bill was morphed at link: http://florida.sierraclub.org/tracker/11497.html

edit typo