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Select voters Thursday received a get-out-the-vote text from a Ninth Circuit Court judge that violates the Florida statute prohibiting judges from partisan campaigning.
Or did they?
While the campaign text appeared to come from Judge Mikaela Nix, currently running to retain her seat on the Group 1 bench in Tuesday’s election, the statute-breaking graphic that accompanied the texts has been copied and reconstructed in such a way it suggests someone outside of Nix’s campaign without access to the original graphics files is actually responsible, according to the digital design expert VoxPopuli consulted.
The campaign graphic in question touts an endorsement from Jim Vickaryous, a governor representing the 18th Judicial Circuit at the Florida Bar Board of Governors. At the bottom of the graphic, there’s the required political disclaimer: “Political advertisement paid for and approved by Mikaela Nix, Democrat, for Circuit Court, Group 1.” [Emphasis added.]
The party affiliation is the problem — and the first sign the graphic wasn’t created by the Nix campaign. Nix ran as a Republican for the Florida state house in 2018; her Avvo profile listed her as a member of the Federalist Society as recently as Aug. 3; and the Orange GOP endorsed her for this election.
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Even if Nix did switch parties to woo Orange County’s predominantly blue voters, by law she couldn't campaign on that. Listing any party affiliation violates the statute against judges engaging in political activity. VoxPopuli asked Nix Friday if she had switched parties and when she switched, she responded by text, saying that she “100 percent know[s] the rules and will never tell you anything about my party affiliation.”
If someone is attempting to damage Nix's campaign, this is the kind of mischief that could land her in hot water with the Florida Elections Commission, potentially liable for fines upwards of $1,000. This is not the first time Nix has been targeted in this election. She was also the subject of an opposition website, since disabled, that VoxPopuli reported on last month.
Judicial races are nonpartisan by statute. Florida Statute 105.071 makes clear that judges and candidates for judicial seats may not “campaign as a member of any political party” or “publicly represent or advertise herself or himself as a member of any political party.”
Sean Freeder, PhD, a political science professor at University of North Florida and director of the university’s Public Opinion Research Lab, told VoxPopuli in a Friday phone interview that the main reason for judicial nonpartisanship is to “try and limit our discussion of partisan politics when it comes to one of the few offices that really is about interpretive expertise."
“When we want our judges to run, we really hope that they’re running more on their legal background, their ability to parse legal text, to write good rules, to make good decisions in the courtroom and otherwise leave politics out of it,” Freeder said.
Aubrey Jewett, PhD, a political science professor at University of Central Florida, told VoxPopuli that judicial candidates must not discuss or publicly identify their party affiliation because the perception that justice is based on party affiliation rather than the rule of law can erode public trust in the judicial system.
“We need courts to have the appearance of impartiality so the public will have more confidence in the legal system and not think that a judge has made a pre-judgment on controversial issues that might appear before them and to protect judicial Independence so that it does not appear that political parties are overly influencing them,” he said in a text Friday.
For her part, Nix vehemently denied sending partisan campaign texts.
She told VoxPopuli her campaign sent a different graphic out Thursday at 4:42 p.m. with her get-out-the-vote text. She shared the graphic that she said was approved and distributed. The graphic was saved as "MNJimVendorsement091126.PNG" and included the political disclaimer: “Political advertisement paid for and approved by Committee to Re-Elect Mikaela Nix, for Circuit 9 Group 1 Judge, Non Partisan Race.”
VoxPopuli shared both graphics with Dan Williams, professor of digital design at Full Sail University. (Williams is also a Democratic candidate for Congress.) He explained why he believes the Democrat Graphic was produced by a different designer than the MNJimVendorsement091126.PNG graphic.
“I can 100 percent say that,” Williams said in a Friday Zoom.
“If I was doing this, I would have the original files, right? I would just change the wording [on the political disclaimer]. But there are just too many things that are weird about [the Democrat Graphic]. It’s the wrong size. The scaling is weird. The colors don’t make sense.”
The graphic that Nix said she texted out has richer colors, Williams said, while the Democrat Graphic looks faded in comparison. It is also a several pixels shorter.
Williams explained that the campaign logos — NIX, with an elongated “X” — on the two graphics don’t match either. When he laid one graphic on top of the other; the logos should have lined up, he said.
“It just doesn’t fit,” he said when he lined up the Ns. “It’s just not the same logo. Look at the X. That is the weird part because the X has extra pieces where it’s fatter and has a different angle.”
Another indicator the Democrat Graphic was redesigned, perhaps in Canva or Adobe Illustrator Williams believes: Part of her logo includes a small image of white scales of justice in a purple circle. In the Democrat Graphic, the scales are in an oval.
“It’s stretched out,” Williams said, adding that this is the only graphic he’s seen where Nix’s scales are in an oval rather than a circle.
“I’ve been looking around for others and I haven’t seen that again. That tells me that this was not made by the same person that made the first one,” he said, referring to the graphic MNJimVendorsement091126.PNG.
“I would put no stock in the second graphic,” he said. “There’s no way it was made by the same person.”
