“It was won by disinformation, misinformation, and outright lies”: Alachua County Commission moves forward on ballot referendum for at-large districts after 12 people bring up the issue in General Public Comment

Commissioner Anna Prizzia makes a motion to move forward with a ballot referendum to overturn the single-member district referendum passed in 2022

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – After 12 people spoke during General Public Comment at today’s Alachua County Commission meeting, the board voted to move forward with a ballot referendum that would overturn the 2022 referendum instituting single-member districts for County Commissioners.

During the noon General Public Comment period, Lizzie Robinson Jenkins led off by saying that “voting this year is important if we plan to save our democracy.” She said, “When SMD – small [sic] member districts – was forced on the Alachua County ballot in 2022, voters were not given a full picture of what impact it would have… Black voters were told a ‘yes’ vote would, and I quote, ‘protect our voice.’ I don’t need anybody to protect my voice… I now know thousands of voters in Alachua County will have no voice in this coming Alachua County Commission election.”

Since only three districts are on the ballot this year (and so far Chuck Chestnut is unopposed in District 5), Jenkins said, the voters in the other two districts will not cast a vote for a County Commissioner this year: “Their voices have been silenced.” Jenkins asked the board to “move forward with placing a referendum on the November ballot.”

Dr. Shayna Rich said she’s “relatively milquetoast about a lot of the voting issues, but the thing that really gets me going is when I feel like it’s not fair, when it’s based on disinformation and misinformation, it really upsets me a lot… So it’s a case where dark money sent out misinformation flyers in the final two weeks of the election, at a time when there wasn’t the ability to correct the mistaken impressions, there wasn’t the option to educate people further, because we didn’t realize it was going to be a case of misinformation.” She asked the board to put a referendum on the ballot and said they could ask Supervisor of Elections Kim Barton for “some wording we’ve proposed.”

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Robert “Hutch” Hutchinson also spoke in favor of a ballot referendum to reverse the vote that changed the County Commission to single-member districts. He said, “At-large representation… just makes sense in a place like Alachua County… It was only when the legislature forced it onto the ballot and then ran a disinformation campaign that the thing got where it is… The fact that the legislature felt no compunctions about just putting it directly on the ballot should be informative… Just put it on the ballot. You can do it – and then it’s up to the voters, you all don’t even have to take a position on it, because it may be difficult in your situation to do so.”

The 2022 referendum passed, 51.48% to 48.52%.

Mailer sent in 2022

Evelyn Foxx, Chair of the Alachua County NAACP, held up a 2022 mailer and said her organization “worked very hard, and we spent a lot of money trying to educate people. But it was just too short a time when the Republicans put out this ballot [sic] with Rodney [Long] and Chuck [Chestnut] and the NAACP emblem on it. Now, we do have an attorney who is looking into suing whoever it was for disenfranchise of the NAACP name; they did not have permission… Give the citizens of Alachua County an opportunity to vote, and they can decide, not two or three people that represents us to Tallahassee… We urge you to please put this back on the ballot.”

[The mailer held up by Foxx is discussed here, along with information from the local NAACP press conference that was called to address it, information from the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund site, and a pro-single-member-district resolution passed by the NAACP in 2018.]

Susan Bottcher also asked the board to put the referendum on the ballot, saying, “I think it’s time for us to do it right. I think it’s time for us to support what we know to be real representative democracy, and that’s where our representatives here on the local level – that’s you – put a referendum on the November ballot that will allow us to have that honest discussion between now and November about what the difference is between single-member districts and at-large districts and the impacts on people’s voices in this county.” 

Iris Burke: “In November, we will have the abortion referendum, we will have the marijuana referendum, the City Commission will hopefully have the GRU referendum… This is the time to do it.”

Iris Burke said, “In a lifetime of political work, I thought I was hardened to dirty tricks, but what happened around this referendum is, I’m going to say, the worst thing I’ve ever seen, where a group that called itself the Social Justice PAC… They were nothing about social justice. But there are people for whom the word ‘social justice’ means something, and they were trying to trick those people.” She also recommended putting it on the November ballot “because in November, we will have the abortion referendum, we will have the marijuana referendum, the City Commission will hopefully have the GRU referendum… This is the time to do it.”

Bobby Mermer, Coordinator of the Alachua County Labor Coalition, said his organization supported putting the referendum on the November 2024 ballot. He said he supported “at-large districts, given the unique distribution of Communities of Interest in Alachua County.” He said they “expected a fair debate on the merits of single-member districts versus at-large districts [in 2022], and we were just ambushed by this information. They did not play fairly.”

Bill Radunovich also supported the ballot referendum, “so we can have a real debate on this and so that local people can have a real say in how they’re governed.”

Faye Williams spent most of her time speaking about a different topic, but she added her support for the referendum. 

Jeffrey Shapiro supported the referendum, saying that its passage was “likely due to the money spent by the Republican PAC,” Rep. Chuck Clemons, and Sen. Keith Perry. He continued, “They will be out of office in November… African American voters are likely to be disadvantaged by [single-member districts] due to their wide population distribution.”

Rep. Yvonne Hinson: “It was won by disinformation, misinformation and outright lies… So our people need to know they were duped and our people need to have an official voice in whether or not they want single-member districts or not.”

Rep. Yvonne Hinson came in at the end of General Public Comment and added her support for the referendum, saying, “It really needs to go back on the ballot so that our local citizens can give their opinion about single-member districts. The way we had it, you guys represented all the people; I think we want you to represent all the people. It was won by disinformation, misinformation and outright lies… So our people need to know they were duped and our people need to have an official voice in whether or not they want single-member districts or not.”

Motion

After public comment, County Commissioner Anna Prizzia made a motion to “move forward with referring the single-member district issue to staff and bringing back to us the details of how we put that on the ballot and get that moving.”

After some discussion, she changed the motion to “remove single-member districts and put at-large voting back, to change our charter back to at-large districts.”

During public comment on the motion, Mermer suggested putting a deadline on the staff response so they didn’t miss the deadline to get the referendum on the ballot. 

Prizzia amended her motion to request that the information come back by the May meeting.

Commissioner Ken Cornell said that since the single-member district referendum passed, “the folks in my district are very upset… because they do not have a voice in this upcoming election… For those in other districts that have spoken to me, they have expressed amazement that they can only vote for one… And so it’s very disheartening, and many of the comments that I heard today resonated with me and things that I heard during the 2022 campaign and since then, so thank you for making the motion to support it.”

The motion passed 4-0, with Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler absent.

Ceasefire resolution

Ten people from Alachua County Health Care Workers for Gaza also spoke during General Public Comment and asked the board to pass a resolution supporting a ceasefire in Gaza. Prizzia said to them, “I stand with you; I believe that we need to end the violence in Gaza immediately. I made the motion to bring forward the first ceasefire resolution, and I would support us talking about it again, but I believe that we’ve had that substantive conversation, and we have the will of the board.”

Chair Mary Alford agreed, saying that the board discussed the ceasefire resolution on January 9 and January 23, and “for us to bring it back again, I would look for a motion from one of our commissioners that voted against it, because both of us have supported it previously.”

Cornell said he supports a ceasefire in Gaza and he “signed that petition, but I do not believe it’s the role of this board to take a board position, so I do not support putting it back on the agenda.”

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