Supporters and critics of a constitutional amendment that would allow independent voters to participate in primary elections for the legislature, governor and Cabinet positions engaged on Friday in a statewide virtual debate.

With Florida being in the minority of states that have a “closed” primary system, there’s been a clamor to allow the more than 3.6 million non-party-affiliated voters (and an additional 188,000 other voters aligned with third-party groups like the Greens and Libertarians) to participate in primary elections.

Amendment 3 calls for a “top two” primary system – meaning the candidates from all parties for those specific offices would appear on the same primary ballot. The two highest vote getters would then advance to the general election – a system that only California and Washington currently allows for.

The hour-long forum – produced in a collaboration of ten Tiger Bay Clubs across the state – comes as more than a million Floridians have already voted by mail for the November 3 election.

“It’s about giving a voice to three-and-a-half million voters who are blocked out of the process from the elections that they’re paying tax dollars for,” said Glenn Burhans, Jr., the chair of All Voters Vote, the group behind Amendment 3 (Burhans Jr. is also a shareholder in the Tallahassee office of the Stearns Weaver Miller Weissler Alhadeff & Sitterson law firm). 

There is a lengthy roster of major organizations in Florida who oppose the measure, beginning with the Florida Republican and Democratic Parties. In addition, groups like the ACLU of Florida, the League of Women Voters of Florida, the Florida Legislative Black Caucus and the Florida Chamber of Commerce also are against Amendment 3.

“You have the left and the right, and you have many groups that people trust and care about,” RPOF Chairman Joe Gruters said. “On the other side, the group that pushed this is primarily funded by a single billionaire who was obviously upset at the system and is trying to change the process.”

That billionaire is Mike Fernandez, the Coral Gables-based health care executive 

who has spent more than $6 billion to finance the proposal. After being a major fundraiser for Florida Republicans for years (including serving for a time as finance co-chairman of Rick Scott’s 2014 gubernatorial campaign), Fernandez has since broken with the GOP – something that Burhans Jr. made sure to remind viewers.

“I note that Chairman Gruters and his political party members had no problem lining up to take Mr. Fernandez’s money when it suited their purposes, but now that Mr. Fernandez wants to fix a broken system, all of a sudden the parties are against letting three and-a-half million voters vote,” Burhans Jr. said. “I think it’s shameful.”

Some of the most intense criticism of the proposed amendment is that it would make Florida a top-two primary system.

That top-two system in California led to two Democrats running in the general election for the U.S. Senate in both 2016 (Kamala Harris and Loretta Sanchez) and 2018 (Dianne Feinstein vs. Kevin de Leon). Gruters noted in Friday’s debate that if top-two system was in effect in 2018 in Florida, it would have been Ron DeSantis vs. Adam Putnam running against each other in the gubernatorial general election.

But Burhans Jr. said that was a specious argument, saying that, with an additional three and-a-half million non-party-affiliated voters participating, the results would have been different.

In stating the Florida Democratic Party’s opposition to the amendment, party chair Terrie Rizzo said that the measure would “penalize” parties with multiple candidates and that it “rewards” those with fewer. The Democrats had five major candidates running for governor in 2018, while Republicans had just two (Democratic nominee Andrew Gillum received 70,354 fewer votes than Adam Putnam, the second-place finisher for the Republicans).

Rizzo said that the party would prefer to implement measures such as automatic voter registration when a person turns 18 or same-day voter registration as better proposals to expand voter access.

Also advocating for Amendment 3 was Jason Altmire, who served three terms in Congress in Pennsylvania (2007-2013) before relocating to Ponte Vedra Beach. His contention is that approval of the proposal would make political polarization in Florida politics “a thing of the past.”

“One of the leading drivers of that polarization is our closed primary system, which empowers the extremes. It induces polarization and partisanship into the process in a way that other states which have more open primary systems do not experience,” he said. 

Gruters disagreed, saying that there are plenty of centrist lawmakers in Tallahassee.

A University of North Florida poll released this week of nearly 3,000 likely voters showed Amendment 3 with 58 percent supporting the measure, 36 percent opposing it, and six percent undecided.