Florida passes bill to change constitutional amendment petition process

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — On the last scheduled day of Florida’s regular legislative session, lawmakers passed a Gov. Ron DeSantis priority to change the state’s ballot initiative process.

The measure passed by the Legislature didn’t go as far as DeSantis’ office wanted. But opponents of the bill said it would still make it difficult for everyday people to participate in the ballot initiative process, and would instead keep power in the hands of state lawmakers and corporate interests.

Bill sponsors, though, said that the legislation was a reasonable way to protect the initiative petition system from fraud. They pointed to a report from the Office of Election Crimes and Security that alleged widespread fraud in an amendment campaign last year.

“This bill does nothing to stop the dissemination of, the distribution of, a petition to the constitution,” said Sen. Erin Grall, R-Vero Beach, the bill’s cosponsor. “Nothing. And it puts guardrails, reasonable guardrails, in those places where we have found fraud.”

Critics of the state’s report have accused the DeSantis administration of applying uneven scrutiny toward an issue he opposed.

Floridians have long used the ballot initiative process to amend the constitution in support of policies that have been otherwise stymied in Tallahassee, like allowing medical marijuana access, creating a $15 minimum wage and restoring voting rights for felons.

This past year, two groups put proposals on the ballot to allow for recreational marijuana use, Amendment 3, and to protect abortion access, Amendment 4. Both measures failed to pass the required 60% support threshold but got a majority of voter support.

Sen. Tina Polsky, D-Boca Raton, said it’s a trend for state Republicans to change the law if they don’t like what they see in the prior election. She pointed to how the state has already made changes to vote-by-mail ballots and to how ballot initiative petitions must be gathered.

“Those amendments, those pesky Amendments 3 and 4, just came too damn close to passing, so what are we gonna do?” Polsky said. “We’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

Sponsor groups that put forward a proposed constitutional amendment need nearly 900,000 validated petitions to get on the ballot. To achieve that number within the required deadline, sponsors often use paid petition circulators. Critics of the bill say it would make the process more expensive.

The final legislation includes hefty fines and a threat of felony prosecution for petition circulators who do not register with the state, whether they’re paid or not.

Volunteers who collect more than 25 petitions beyond those in their immediate family would need to register as a circulator, or they could be charged with a third-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. People could still pass out as many blank petitions as they want, as long as the voters then turned in their signed petitions themselves.

The bill also shortens the required turnaround time for petitions, requiring sponsors to submit them within 10 days instead of within 30 days.

It would prohibit people with felony records who haven’t had their rights restored, people who are not U.S. citizens and people who are not Florida residents from collecting petitions.

Sen. Shevrin Jones, D-Miami Gardens, said the bill “puts the bar out of reach and then tells Floridians to jump anyway.”

Grall, though, said it was offensive to assume that Florida’s citizens couldn’t follow the changed law.

Some Democrats also pointed out that it sets harsher restrictions on petitions for a constitutional amendment, but doesn’t crack down on the petitions that put lawmakers like them on the ballot.

Though Democrats largely opposed the petition change proposal, they did throughout the session applaud one provision in it, inserted by Republican lawmakers — a ban on the state using taxpayer funds to put out messages about a proposed constitutional amendment.

Last year, DeSantis’ administration blanketed the airwaves with public service announcements directing voters to a website opposing the abortion amendment. Other public service announcements were decried by the marijuana amendment sponsor as propaganda.

Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Pensacola, said that the ban on state spending was inspired by the actions of people who are part of state government, saying “they engaged in behavior that will now be unlawful and will now be prevented if we pass this bill.”

The Legislature has declined to look into exactly how much the state spent on its advertisements leading up to the last election.

In the House, Democrats tried to take the public funding ban a step further by proposing two amendments in response to the House’s investigation into the Hope Florida Foundation.

The foundation received a $10 million donation from Medicaid provider Centene, then split that money between two nonprofits that later sent millions of dollars to a political committee focused on opposing the proposed marijuana amendment last year.

Attorney General James Uthmeier helped direct the funds. He also was the head of the anti-Amendment 3 political committee.

Rep. Alex Andrade, R-Pensacola, grilled members of DeSantis’ administration on Hope Florida through his role in the Health Care Budget Subcommittee. Andrade said the Democrats’ proposal didn’t need to be added on the bill with limited time left in session.

“I firmly believe that our law enforcement agencies are looking at this very closely at this point,” Andrade said. “I hope that justice is done in the interim. Next session I’m sure we can do something.”

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