Democracy in Action

So on November 4, 281,899 Miami-Dade voters wanted Gwen Margolis as property appraiser, but that didn't count because it was less than 50 percent of the 670,395 total ballots cast. So we had to have a runoff election, and only 96,870 voters showed up. Of those, only 39,669 voted for...

By Kyle Munzenrieder

December 17, 2008

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So on November 4, 281,899 Miami-Dade voters wanted Gwen Margolis as property appraiser, but that didn't count because it was less than 50 percent of the 670,395 total ballots cast. So we had to have a runoff election, and only 96,870 voters showed up.

Of those, only 39,669 voted for Maroglis this time around, while 57,201 voted for Pedro Garcia, making him the winner.

So even though 281,899 wanted Margolis for the job back in Novemeber, because 57,201 wanted Garcia this time around, he wins. Which makes perfect sense to no one. It's pretty obvious no one cared about the outcome of this election (hello, low turnout), and this is kind of a bummer for Margolis (not to say Garcia can't do a decent job, who knows?). Riptide is thinking we might want to change the rules to avoid needless multimillion-dollar runoffs and electoral F-ups in the future.

-- Kyle Munzenrieder

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