Thousands of Pasco voters won’t get a chance to weigh in on two political contests this November, one for the County Commission and the other for a state House seat.
That’s because of what some voting rights advocates consider a flaw in Florida election rules that has already determined their outcomes.
In Florida, only those registered with a party can vote for candidates in their same party’s primary. But if only candidates from only one party qualify for a partisan race, the door opens to everyone.
For example, if only Democrats end up running for a House seat, that race becomes what’s called a universal primary. All voters, including Republicans, get a say in who gets the job.
There’s one big asterisk: If any challenger awaits in the general election at the time of the primary — even a write-in candidate whose name will not appear on the ballot — the primary remains limited to people from the same party. The state still considers the race contested, even though no write-in has ever won an election in Florida.
Write-in candidates appear often enough that some voting rights groups call it the “write-in loophole.” Some pop up with a clear intention of closing primaries to a single party, basically guaranteeing the outcome.
Both write-ins in the two Pasco races dropped out days after the August primary.
By shutting out other voters, the prevailing side gains greater assurance its candidate toes the party line.
“The write-in loophole is one of the most corrupt, anti-democratic mechanisms that the two parties in the state of Florida utilize today,” said Jeremy Gruber, the senior vice president of Open Primaries, which advocates for open and nonpartisan primary elections nationwide. “Hands down.”
How ‘write-in loophole’ played in Pasco
The District 4 Pasco Commission race featured two Republicans. Incumbent Lisa Yeager, who Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed to the seat in 2024, faced political newcomer Jonathon Deckard, seeking to represent an area stretching from Land O’Lakes to New Port Richey.
That contest would have been open to voters of all political stripes. But on June 11, a day before office seekers had to declare their candidacy, Pasco Republican Executive Committee member Louie Rodriguez filed to run as a write-in, which avoids having to pay a filing fee or collect petition signatures to get his name on the ballot. His entry closed the primary to Republican voters.
Yeager easily won the Aug. 18 primary with 62% of the vote. Rodriguez dropped out a week later, securing Yeager her job.
While just more than 80,000 active voters are registered in the commission district, less than half were registered Republicans before the primary. Roughly 44,000 of the district’s eligible voters couldn’t make a pick in the race, most of them Democrats or residents without party affiliation.
And since the election, Rodriguez has made clear his intention was to limit the contest to Republican voters.
“When I was elected and became a member of the Pasco County Executive Committee I swore [an] oath to support Republican candidates and the Republican Party,” Rodriguez wrote in an emailed statement to the Tampa Bay Times. “I continue to respect that oath.”
An open primary election to all voters regardless of party affiliation, Rodriguez wrote, “was not acceptable to me and to the Republican Party of Pasco.” He disagreed that the move resulted in voter suppression.
“It is not the duty of the Republican Party of Pasco to look out for the interests of the Democrat Party if the Democrats are too disorganized to field and run their own candidates,” he wrote.
If Democrats were to close off a primary to their own party, Rodriguez added, “they are maintaining the integrity of their political beliefs.”
In the House race, write-in candidate Paul Bybee wrote in a text message to the Times that “many factors led to the decision” to withdraw. He did not respond to multiple phone calls and text messages seeking to pose follow-up questions.
Bybee filed his candidacy on June 12, the deadline to enter, and dropped out 10 days after the primary. That left state Rep. Randy Maggard the victor, selected by only Republican voters.
How the ‘loophole’ was established
Florida has had the “write-in loophole” for nearly 30 years. It also applies to candidates from minor parties who have little shot of winning but close a primary upon stepping into the race.
It started with an amendment to Florida’s constitution in 1998, which opened primaries to all voters if candidates from only one party qualified to run and didn’t face a general election opponent.
A 2000 Florida Division of Elections opinion states that even a write-in candidate counts as opposition in the general election. If the creators of the amendment wanted to exclude write-in candidates from closing a primary, the opinion read, they could have specified that.
In 2020, voters nearly approved an amendment to the state’s constitution that would’ve opened races for the state Legislature, governor and Cabinet to all registered voters regardless of party affiliation. The two highest vote-getters would’ve advanced to the general election.
That proposal was strongly opposed by leaders in both parties. Almost a third of Florida’s voters are registered without party affiliation and are effectively shut out of primaries.
“Both parties in the state of Florida have, for years, been trying to keep primary elections’ turnout small and predictable,” Gruber said. “All of which is designed to suppress voters and to ensure that candidates in the state of Florida are elected by small groups of partisan voters and not the electorate as a whole.”
Integrity Florida, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research institute that aims to serve as a government watchdog, in 2022 released a report that described write-ins as “ghost candidates.”
The report details how write-in candidates have closed multiple local and state elections since the early 2000s, including county commission and state races. It’s happened before in Pasco County.
In 2012, former Pasco County Commissioner Ed Collins, another local Republican Party leader, qualified as a write-in candidate for school superintendent to close the primary. He told the Times that that he was a “firm believer that Republican primaries should be reserved for Republican voters,” and rejected any thought that his move did a disservice to voters not in the party.
And in 2022, Rodriguez filed as a write-in candidate in the Pasco County Commission District 2 race. About two weeks after now-Commissioner Seth Weightman won the primary, Rodriguez dropped out.
His entry in this year’s Pasco Commission race was a reprise.
Florida Sen. Don Gaetz, a Republican who represents Escambia, Santa Rosa and parts of Okaloosa counties, chaired the state Senate Ethics and Elections committee in 2026.
In a phone call with the Times, he said write-in candidates are allowed under the law. He said he doesn’t believe primaries should be open to all voters, even though he has heard concerns from the growing number of voters without party affiliation who feel shut out.
Gaetz said it’s hard to regulate or determine a write-in candidate’s motivation for entering or withdrawing from a race. He said he has never enlisted a write-in candidate to narrow the pool of voters in one of his elections.
“There are far better ways to win an election,” Gaetz added.
