An emergency election motion sat in a pile because nobody read the routing rules. A judge wrote the wasted days into his order. And that order now gets served on me, a guy with no client, no fee, and no permission slip.
TL;DR: The lawsuit over Deerfield Beach’s Ballot Question D died as an emergency on August 17. Judge Carlos Rodriguez denied the injunction one day before the ballot deadline, and his order reads like an autopsy of the plaintiffs’ calendar. Question D went to the printer. The case lives on, slow track. My overnight amicus brief didn’t move the ruling, and never thought it would. But the court’s order was served on me, by name, next to the County Attorney. I asked to be counted. The service list is the receipt.
Fund the fight: gofundme.com/f/records-cost-money-so-does-silence
Start with the trick, because the trick is the whole case.
The Deerfield Beach Charter caps commissioners at eight straight years. Michael Hudak, District 1, first elected March 2019, hits that wall in March 2027. Open seat. Guaranteed.
On August 4, the Commission voted 3-2 to put Question D on the November ballot. Question D moves city elections from March to November. It cancels the March 2027 election. It stretches every sitting commissioner’s term by about 20 months. And in a new subsection, 3.04(3)(iii), it says those 20 bonus months don’t count toward the eight-year limit.
Read that again. The extension that carries Hudak past eight years is exempt from the rule that counts to eight. The seat that was going to be open in 2027 now keeps its incumbent through November 2028, where he can’t run again.
The ballot language tells voters about the 20-month extension. It says nothing about the term-limit exemption. A voter reading Question D learns the terms get longer. The voter never learns the clock stops running.
Hudak cast one of the three votes to pass it.
Ben Preston, District 2, sits in the same spot. Same extension, same exemption, same saved eligibility. He voted no.
One more number. In November 2022, this same city was asked straight up whether to extend commission term limits. Voters said no, roughly three to one. The Commission knew that. A speaker reminded them on the record at first reading. They passed Question D anyway.
The Lawsuit
Wayne Adams, a declared candidate for Preston’s seat, and Dan Herz, who planned to run for Hudak’s, sued on August 7. Case CACE-26-012842. Florida law, section 101.161(1), requires ballot summaries in clear language that state the chief purpose of a measure. The Florida Supreme Court held in Askew v. Firestone that a summary hiding a material effect fails the statute even if every word in it is true. The hidden term-limit exemption is the claim.
Yes, that Dan Herz. The broken door, the $968.13 affidavit, the repair bill written down to $31.87 under the felony line. Different story, different clock. This one is about the lawsuit.
And what happened to the lawsuit is a calendar.
The Autopsy
Question D passed August 4. The complaint hit the docket August 7. The injunction motion came August 10. The ballot deadline was August 18 at 5:00 PM.
The hearing happened August 17. One day of margin.
Judge Rodriguez denied the injunction. Plaintiffs asked for a stay on the spot. He denied that too, in an order signed at 5:55 PM. Paragraph 3 of that order is worth your time, because judges do not write like this:
The plaintiffs lost five days before filing. They misread the routing order and never sent the emergency motion to the right judge. They asked the clerk for permission instead. The motion, in the court’s words, “sat languishing for a few more days and fortunately, a clerk called the Court asking what to do.”
Fortunately, a clerk called the Court.
That sentence is in a signed order. An emergency election case reached its judge because a clerk picked up a phone.
Note what the judge did not rule: that Question D’s language is legal. He denied relief on procedure. The real question, whether voters deserve to know about 3.04(3)(iii), is still open. But the ballot went to the printer with Question D on it.
My Part, Told Straight
The night the complaint was filed, I read it. By morning I had written and filed an amicus brief. Pro se. No side. It said one thing: mind the calendar. An election is machinery, and machinery runs on a clock.
Here’s the honest accounting. The order does not cite my brief. The judge got to the clock through the plaintiffs’ own motion. My paper did not move the ruling. Pull the docket and check. Always pull the docket.
So what did it buy? Page 3 of the order. The service list. Between the County Attorney and plaintiffs’ counsel: TIMOTHY RICHARD STEVENS. The court serves its orders on a nonparty who taught himself to write a brief overnight and filed it clean enough that nobody moved to strike it. I get the rulings the minute they’re signed.
I didn’t ask for standing. I asked to be counted. A name on a service list is what counted looks like.
I’ll take it.
What the City’s Answer Says Without Saying It
On August 31 the City filed its Answer. I read filings the way I read email headers. The text tells you their position. The structure tells you their posture.
The Answer pleads zero defenses. No mootness. No laches. The judge handed them a delay defense in paragraph 3 and they left it on the table. Why? My guess: they’re waiting for the November election to kill the case for them, and don’t want to say so in writing yet. Watch for the mootness motion in mid-November. Measure the gap.
The Answer also tags one block of the complaint “irrelevant”: the 2022 vote, a commissioner calling the extension “extremely egregious,” residents objecting, Hudak voting on his own eligibility. Every fact that stings got the same tag. Nobody builds a fence around nothing. The fence is the map.
And paragraph 58 of the Answer denies paragraph 56 of the complaint, which they already denied at 56. A copy-paste error, in the last paragraph, in a case about sloppy ballot drafting. The machine is plugged into a potato. I just document the smell.
Why I Bother
Because the record is the only version of events that survives. The coverage moves on. The Answer sits unread. The mootness motion arrives and the file closes and the official story says the system worked.
The record should also say a citizen read every page and wrote down what the pages showed. Before the vote. Not after.
Vote however you want on Question D. But on November 3 you’ll know what 3.04(3)(iii) does, because I read the docket and left a trail.