After dying unheard last Session, a revived bill by Tallahassee Democratic Rep. Allison Tant that would give teeth to Florida’s rules on party affiliation in elections just cleared its first House hurdle.

Members of the Government Operations Subcommittee voted unanimously for the measure (HB 91), which aims to close a loophole in Florida law that today enables candidates to skirt requirements Florida has for partisan elections.

Florida law requires candidates to be registered as a member of the political party from which they seek nomination for a year before the beginning of qualifying for a given General Election.

But candidates have repeatedly skirted those rules, and courts haven’t consistently stopped them.

Tant said that today, it’s “not clear who has standing to issue a legal challenge” in cases where there is a party affiliation dispute, or where the challenge should come from.

“This bill is critically necessary to clarify Florida law so that we don’t have any confusion,” she said.

HB 91 — and its Senate analogue (SB 62) by Kissimmee Democratic Sen. Kristen Arrington, which has already cleared two of the three committees to which it was referred — would require candidates to swear an oath that they have been registered with their political party for at least 365 consecutive days before the qualifying period.

Currently, the oath requires candidates only to promise that they’ve been a member of the party for 365 days, without the “consecutive” qualifier.

HB 91 would also require no-party candidates to similarly affirm, by oath, that they have not been a member of a political party for at least a year prior.

Vitally, it would provide that challenges to eligibility must be from either qualified opponents in a given election or a state political party with a stake in the race. Challenges would have to be filed in the circuit court for the county in which the qualifying officer is headquartered.

Florida has seen repeated cases of candidates running under a party label they were not legally eligible to claim, despite the state’s requirement that candidates belong to their chosen party for at least a year before qualifying.

In 2022, Florida Politics reported that congressional candidate Curtis Calabrese filed as a Democrat in Florida’s 22nd Congressional District after only two weeks in the party. He later withdrew.

A similar situation arose in December 2024 in Florida’s 6th Congressional District.

Other candidates have remained on the ballot despite clear violations, including Wancito Francius, who stayed in the Democratic Primary for House District 107 while falling six weeks short of the 365-day requirement.

By then, Florida’s limited enforcement power was well known due to a case involving former COVID dashboard manager Rebekah Jones. A three-Judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal allowed her to stay on the 2022 Democratic Primary ballot even though she did not technically qualify.

Judge Scott Makar pointed to a “gap in the statute” and said lawmakers “may wish to consider implementing a mechanism to decide, early on, the bona fides of a political Primary candidate’s party oath (because) currently one is lacking and requires that political party candidates be taken at their word, which is not likely to be sustainable.”

Tant alluded to a perennial candidate, Beulah Farquharson, whom she did not name but described as having “bounced around” Florida in recent years, running for various offices and often switching parties just days before the qualifying date.

Most recently, Farquharson filed in 2024 to run against Madison County Clerk Billy Washington, who appeared at the committee meeting Wednesday to support HB 91. An August 2024 report by the Madison Enterprise Reporter said Farquharson, who filed to run as a Democrat, had done so the same day she switched to that party, having previously been registered as a no-party candidate in Osceola County.

Washington sued to remove Farquharson from the ballot, and while the effort eventually proved successful, Tant said, it also took months and cost Washington thousands of dollars in the process.

“Our courts were put through a ridiculous exercise on this,” she said.

Miami Democratic Rep. Wallace Aristide, who beat Francius and ultimately won the HD 107 seat last year, thanked Tant for sponsoring the bill before speaking briefly about his experience dealing with the opaqueness of the current law.

“We ran in the race, and somebody was from another party, and it was in contention,” he said. “It was in the (Miami) Herald. It was everywhere.”

Tampa Republican Rep. Susan Valdés, an ex-Democrat who switched parties shortly after winning re-election in December, described HB 91 as an “election integrity bill.”

“We must follow the rules. And if the rules are that you have to be registered for a year, then that should be it,” she said.

“And by the same token, the challenging of these (issues) should not be spiteful but more so factual, and that date should make that determination.”

HB 91 will next go to the State Affairs Committee, after which it would reach the House floor. Fort Lauderdale Democratic Rep. Daryl Campbell is co-sponsoring the measure, which Tant amended to go into effect immediately so it can apply to 2026 races.

SB 62 awaits a hearing before the Senate Rules Committee before making it to the floor. Senate Democratic Leader Lori Berman and Tamarac Democratic Sen. Rosalind Osgood are co-sponsors.

Last Session’s version of the Senate bill cleared the chamber on a 38-0 vote before dying in the House, where lawmakers never took up Tant’s bill.