Welcome to

A bipartisan group of activists wants to drastically change the way candidates are selected. As Matt Galka tells us, the group says it’s an effort to include everyone.

Closed primaries determine Florida’s partisan candidates for Congress, the state legislature, Governor and cabinet.  But one group wants to change that.

“Currently we have over 27 percent of Florida registered voters who are registered as non-party affiliation or NPA’s by law those people are blocked,” said Glenn Burhans.

Burhans is part of the “All Voters Vote” initiative.  The group wants to open up the closed primaries.  They’ve proposed a constitutional amendment drastically changing the primary system to allow non-party affiliate voters to cast ballots.

The All Voters Vote group hopes their effort would change the way candidates appeal to Floridians.

“By opening up the primary process your going to have canadates that will have to speak to a broader cross section in order to win,” said Burhans.

Candidates involved in primaries would have to appeal to more than just their base.  The proposal also changes the way races are decided.  If a candidate received more than 50 percent of the vote in a primary would win the office, or the top two would advance to a general election if there was no majority winner.

With a special session looming for the legislature to once again draw Fair Districts, Burhans says the original intent was a good start, but drawing voting lines doesn’t solve every problem.

“It does not address and can not address today’s problem and tomorrows problem. Which is the growing disenfranchisement of voters,” he said.

The group will need nearly 700 thousand signatures to get the proposal on 2016’s ballot.

The bipartisan group that’s pushing the ballot initiative includes a former Democratic campaign manager for Governor Reubin Askew, and former Republican Secretary of State Jim Smith.