Candidate booted from Supervisor of Elections race sues to remove candidate who had her removed 

Turnabout, as they say, is fair play. Cynthia Harris, the former candidate for Supervisor of Elections, who last week was removed from the ballot by court order, is suing the guy who got her removed. 

On Monday, Harris, representing herself, filed an emergency motion for injunction and declaratory relief against Dan Helm, a Democrat running for Supervisor of Elections, requesting that he be removed from the general election ballot because he listed “Dan Helm” on his candidate oath, “which is not his legal name but his nickname.”

Helm’s legal name is Daniel Charles Halley Helm. His candidate qualifying documents list his name as “Dan Helm.”

Harris’ motion, which pointedly uses Helm’s full four-name legal name throughout the document, states that because Helm used a "nickname" without submitting a signed, notarized Affidavit of Nickname, his candidate oath is not valid and he’s in “violat[ion of] the election code.” 

Harris is requesting that the court remove him from the general election ballot, otherwise voters “will be mistakenly voting for an individual who did not qualify for the ballot.”

Helm, reached by phone Friday afternoon, shrugged off the lawsuit. “I think it is a lawsuit filed sort of out of spite, which is sad to see,” he told VoxPopuli.   

One of four Democrats who were running in the Aug. 20 primary, which included Wes Hodge, Karen Castor Dentel and Sunshine Linda-Marie Grund, Helm had filed a lawsuit in the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court against Harris, the only non-Democrat, accusing her of paying her qualifying fee from a personal bank account rather than a campaign account. 

During the Aug. 13 trial, it was determined that Harris had forged a designation of campaign depository statement to conceal the bank her filing fee had come from. As a result, Chief Judge Lisa Munyon removed Harris from the ballot, then canceled the Supervisor of Elections primary, nullifying the ballots already cast during early voting, and rescheduled that race for the general election on Nov. 5.  

As for Harris’ motion, it’s unclear if it will get any traction, although Chief Judge Munyon recently transferred the case into her division.

Florida statute 99.021, which Harris only partially cites in her motion, mandates that candidates designate the name they want to have on the ballot, which “must include the candidate’s legal given name or names, a shortened form of the candidate’s legal given name or names, [emphasis added] an initial or initials of the candidate’s legal given name or names, or a bona fide nickname customarily related to the candidate and by which the candidate is commonly known, immediately followed by the candidate’s legal surname.” 

Harris leaves out the part about the “shortened form of the candidate’s legal given name.”

But a 2010 memo from the Department of State’s then-Director of the Division of Elections Donald Palmer stated: “If you plan to designate a nickname on your candidate oath form other than a generally recognized shortened version of your legal name (e.g., "Rob" or "Bob" for Robert, “Bill" for William, "DJ" for David Joseph, etc.), you should provide notice of your intention to the Division of Elections well in advance of the qualifying period and make a satisfactory showing that you are generally known by the nickname or that you have used the nickname as part of your legal name.”

The phrase “other than a generally recognized shortened version of your legal name …” seems to suggest that listing “Dan Helm,” rather than “Daniel Charles Halley Helm” might pass muster, even without the Affidavit of Nickname.

That’s how Helm, a civil litigator, reads it. He told VoxPopuli he didn't need to fill out the Affidavit of Nickname because he's not using a nickname on his candidate forms or the ballot.

“It's not a nickname. It's a shortened version of my legal name, and I know the law,” he said. 

“Where the courts get upset is when [people are] trying to use a nickname that makes them appear like somebody else,” he continued. “I'm not trying to appear as anybody else other than myself. It's my own name. It's a shortened version of my legal name. Just like William Cowles, right? We know him as Bill Cowles, right? Because that's how he appeared on the ballot, as Bill, even though his legal name is William. Or Phil [Diamond], our comptroller is Philip, but he goes by Phil.”

Harris laughed at Helm’s idea that she had filed her lawsuit out of “spite.”

“As a former candidate for Supervisor of Elections, it is my duty to protect the integrity of the election code,” she told VoxPopuli in a Friday phone call. “This is why I filed to run for Supervisor of Elections. Mr. Helm is an attorney who should have known whether his own qualification forms were accurate.”

Asked if voters would really be confused by having “Daniel” or “Dan” on a ballot or if she just was trying to put a fine point on it, she simply said, “The legalities of qualification, it stands.” 

Still, Helm said he’s unconcerned about “defending this lawsuit.” 

“Even if Cynthia, somehow, is right that the [nickname] affidavit needed to be filled out, it's not a disqualifying act,” he said. “There’s nowhere in the statutory language that it talks about failure to do this thing is a disqualification.”