Florida’s Democracy Deserts: Patterns of Contestation and Cancellation of Florida Local Elections

Abstract

A necessary condition for democracy is the periodic conduct of elections. U.S. federal and state governments must hold elections on specific dates mandated by law. However, Florida localities may run elections at times and manners largely of their choosing. Furthermore, elections in Florida are canceled if only one candidate qualifies for each office on the ballot. The confluence of these policies results in some Florida localities not holding elections for decades. Drawing on an original dataset of local elections across Florida, we explore the conditions under which Florida localities held—or did not hold—their most recent regularly scheduled at-large election. Jurisdiction size and whether the most recent regularly scheduled election was concurrent with state or federal contests are positively correlated but a council–manager form of government is negatively correlated with jurisdictions holding their last regularly scheduled election. These democracy deserts raise normative concerns about the state of representative governance in local jurisdictions in the United States.