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Highlands Today

Don't Forget To Vote Today

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By Douglas  Carman | Highlands Today

Published: January 29, 2008

SEBRING — With the Democratic and Republican presidential primaries going off today, partisan voters in Highlands County and all of Florida have two questions to answer:

u Who do they want to become their party's nominee, and

u Do they want to approve a constitutional amendment that makes Save Our Homes portable while doubling the homestead exemption for homeowners whose house's assessed value is at least $75,000?

The Supervisor of Elections Office reported that 6,672 voted early, while 898 absentee ballots were received by Saturday, well above what supervisor Joe Campbell said he predicted. Campbell declined to provide an estimate for today's turnout.

As far as presidential candidates go, former Massachusetts governor and Republican candidate Mitt Romney is Sebring builder James Matthews' pick.

Highlands Ridge resident Barbara Younts thought New York Sen. Hillary Clinton would bring back the economy of the 1990s that she enjoyed.

There was just one problem for Matthews and Younts. Matthews is a registered Democrat, and Younts a life-long Republican, and both of them knew they couldn't really vote for their top choices today.

"I have to vote for Romney," said Younts, who thought he was the "lesser evil" in the party. In 2000 and 2004, she voted for President George W. Bush, and she's banking on her husband Paul, a Democrat, to vote for Clinton for her.

Matthews, who said that he registered Democrat back when he lived in Kentucky because most elections there were decided by that party's runoffs, did not say which Democrat he would vote for today.

Florida's primaries are closed, meaning you must be a member of a political party to vote for a presidential candidate in that party's primary. Third-party members and nonpartisans can still vote on the property tax amendment in this election.

Amendment 1

The amendment's generating even more confusion. According to both county party chairs, Democrats and Republicans alike aren't sure which way to go on it, and that's assuming they even fully understand what the property amendment does.

A lot of them do not.

"I've got someone in here right now," said Justine Devlin, the Highlands County Republican Party chairwoman. When reached by Highlands Today, she was in the middle of explaining Amendment I to a visitor.

At the county's Democratic headquarters, Chairman Patrick Hogan described a similar confusion.

"They were real surprised that if you have, like, a $50,000 home, that all you would get are the $25,000 (exemption) that you have now," said Patrick Hogan, the chairman for the county's Democratic Party. If the amendment passes, the home would need to have an assessed value of $75,000 before the full $50,000 exemption kicks in.

Campbell said that his staff also gets a lot of questions on what Amendment I does, but he instructed his staff not to discuss it because he did not want to appear biased for or against it.

Voters were divided. Matthews, who knew how the exemption worked but admitted he was a bit confused with the Save Our Homes portability portion of the amendment, said he would vote for it today.

"Anything we can do to stimulate the economy," he said.

Robert Garcia, a Republican businessman out of Sebring, disagreed and said he would vote it down. He argued it would cut into city and county services and would, among other things, affect roads and city water supplies.

"There's only so many ways the government can make money," Garcia said.

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