Check your mailbox! This week, voters across the county received their vote-by-mail ballot for the August 20 Primary Election. If your ballot has not arrived, you can check your voter status and request a mail-in-ballot at voteindianriver.org or by calling the Elections Office at 772-226-4700.

Let us clarify that It is not too late to request a mail-in-ballot for the Primary Election. The Primary Election Mail Ballot Request Deadline is August 8 by 5 p.m. Sample ballots are also now available online for your review. View your sample ballot here.

If you have questions about the Primary Election, feel free to call our office at (772) 226-5267. Our volunteers are available 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday to Thursday and also Friday mornings. 

Are you excited to make a difference in Indian River County? We need your help! Join our voter registration team, contribute to our editorial efforts, volunteer as a poll watcher, or join our texting team. Get involved with the Democrats of Indian River by signing up to volunteer here.

We also welcome donations to support our initiatives. Together, let's create a brighter future for our community and our country.

We are thrilled to invite you to our upcoming Get Out The Vote Ice Cream Social! Enjoy ice cream and connect with fellow Democrats while discovering how you can help get out the vote in the 2024 Election. Join us at our Democratic Headquarters located at 2345 14th Ave, Vero Beach on Sunday July 28 from 4-6 PM. Let us know you're coming HERE.

In Indian River, which is so dominated by a MAGA Republican Party, winning its primary almost guarantees election. It happens all the time and is little more than a transparent ploy to help make sure that a favored, usually far-right, candidate wins its primary.

Here we have critical races for sheriff and county commissioner. In both, fringe write-in candidates have appeared.

With no meaningful choice otherwise — Democrats are successfully discouraged from even running — voters with no party affiliation and Democrats would like to have a voice in these de facto general elections, pitting favored far-right, or even arguably unfit candidates, against more moderate candidates like Fellsmere Police Chief Keith Touchberry or Milo Thronton (sheriff's race) and Commissioner Laura Moss, who has sought to represent all of her constituents as a commissioner.

But it doesn't end there. Some want to do the same to currently nonpartisan school board elections, with an initiative on this November's ballot that would make those partisan as well. If that passes, we can be sure that our school board will become just another tool of the MAGA agenda to ban books and make curriculum conform to the right's social agenda at the expense of our children's education.

We know that both parties are guilty of this practice in counties they dominate and tacitly agree to allow it to continue, but it should change. Frankly, its a disgrace to democracy and makes a mockery of the idea of “one man, one vote.”

Fred Grumman, Vero Beach
Published in TC Palm 7/10/24

This week, MAGA Republicans from across the country gathered at the RNC convention where they moved one step closer to passing a nationwide abortion ban, repealing the Affordable Care Act, cutting Social Security and Medicare, and giving away millions in tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations.

Republicans at this convention united behind Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda for if he takes back he White House. This unprecedented takeover plan by Trump and his MAGA loyalists rolls back Americans’ rights and freedoms, hurts the middle class, and undermines our democracy by giving Trump power like no president has ever had over your daily life.

Every Tuesday at 6pm-7:30pm, the Voter Registration Department at FDP will be hosting voter registration specific virtual phone banks on Zoom. Click here to join the weekly phone banks on Tuesdays at 6pm-7pm ET.