Anti-abortion and pro-abortion people rally outside of the Florida Supreme Court on Feb. 7, 2024, after the oral argument on the proposed amendment to enshrine abortion-rights in the Florida Constitution. (Photo by Jackie Llanos/Florida Phoenix)
A bill that would radically change Florida’s citizen-led constitutional amendment process received its first hearing in the Legislature on Thursday, where dozens of Floridians warned it would deal a major blow to direct democracy.
The measure (HB 1205), sponsored by Fort Myers Republican Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka, was approved mostly along party-lines by the House Government Operations Subcommittee, although Osceola County Democrat Jose Alvarez joined committee Republicans in voting yes.
“Members, it has become apparent that our citizen-initiative process is broken,” Persons-Mulicka said in introducing the legislation.
“The citizen initiative process was initially intended to allow Floridians who believed passionately that the Constitution should be changed to go out into their communities — to go out into communities across the state and convince their fellow Floridians to support putting an amendment on the ballot. Now the process has been taken over by out-of-state fraudsters looking to make a quick buck and by special interests intent on buying their way into our Constitution.”
The proposal comes after Gov. Ron DeSantis announced in January that he wanted lawmakers to reform election laws regarding signature petition fraud in a special session. They did not at that time.
The governor lambasted the organizers of two separate proposed constitutional amendments last year that would have legalized adult cannabis use and enshrined abortion rights into the state Constitution, respectively. Both organizers spent well more than $100 million to fund their efforts. Both received majority support but fell short of the 60% required for passage.
Provisions
The bill approved Thursday during its first committee stop makes a number of significant changes to the initiative process, including:
- Requires all petition circulators – volunteer as well as paid staff – to be residents of Florida.
- Petition sponsor must post a $1 million bond payable to the Division of Elections.
- Submit an affirmation that each person handling or collecting a petition form has never been convicted of a felony related to the Florida Election Code; exploitation of an elderly person or disabled adult; sex offense or murder; fraudulent practices; forgery; counterfeiting or perjury.
- Revises the deadline by which petition forms must be delivered by the sponsor to a supervisor of elections from 30 days to 10 days and increases the fines if those deadlines are missed up to $2,500.
- For each form that is ultimately “willingly” not submitted by the petition sponsor, the measure increases the fine from $1,000 to $5,000.
- Once a supervisor of elections has verified and validated a petition form, they must send a notice to the voter that a petition with the voter’s information has been validated, with a statement notifying the voter that if he or she did not sign the petition, that voter can file a complaint alleging that his or her signature has been misrepresented or forged.
- Creates a process allowing that voter to fill out a form and submit it to their local supervisor of election.
‘Unrepresentative government’
Several dozen people spoke out during the nearly three-hour committee meeting to denounce the legislation.
“This bill is not about election integrity, it’s about fear – fear of the people using their constitutional right to act when you fail to deliver on the issues that matter most to them,” said Genesis Robinson, executive director of Equal Ground Education Action Fund, a Black-led social justice and voting rights group. “HB 1205 would make [the] citizen initiative process nearly impossible.”
Simone Liang, a 22-year-old recent graduate of the University of Florida, said that it was “sad” that in recent years democracy was being eroded in the Sunshine State. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this bill is being proposed right after one of the amendments from the last election cycle was close to 60%.” (Amendment 3 on cannabis got 56% of the vote; Amendment 4 on abortion rights received 57%).
“There shouldn’t be a need to have a $1 million bond set in case there are errors for the petitions,” Liang said. “Petitions are already hand checked by the supervisor of elections, one-by-one. There is no need to install a $5,000 fine. That is crazy. Because if we aren’t able to participate directly in our democracy, we are getting closer and closer to fascism, to unrepresentative government.”
‘Liberal special interests’
There were significantly fewer voices supporting the bill.
John Labriola, a lobbyist for Christian Family Coalition Florida, noted how Floridians Protecting Freedom, the group behind the abortion-rights amendment, paid a $328,000 fine after the Florida Department of State’s Office of Elections Crimes and Security claimed the group’s petition-gathering efforts amounted to “widespread election fraud.”
“Although the campaign to defeat Amendment 4 and also Amendment 3, the pro-marijuana amendment, was successful, both measures came close, which proves that our constitutional amendment process urgently needs protection from deep pocketed liberal special interests,” he said.
The measure has a Senate companion sponsored by Spring Hill Republican Blaise Ingoglia (SB 1414).
Andrew Shrivell, executive director of the anti-abortion group Florida Voice for the Unborn, said his organization preferred Ingoglia’s measure, because it contains more of the proposals DeSantis released in January, such as eliminating third-party collection of petition forms.
“Without that key measure, HB 1205 is the Ford Edsel of initiative petition reform, while SB 1414 remains the Cadillac version,” he said.
In declaring his support for the proposal, Hernando and Pasco County GOP Rep. Jeff Holcomb questioned the claim about the loss of direct democracy, saying the United States and the state of Florida are a “representative republic.”
“You have 120 chances in the Florida House, and you got 40 chances in the Florida Senate. It is not hard to get a bill created,” he said.
But while getting a bill created might not be that difficult, getting one passed if you’re a Democrat on a cutting issue isn’t so easy, which is why previous Democratic lawmakers’ efforts to raise the minimum wage, restore voting rights to the formerly incarcerated, and legalize medical marijuana only passed through citizen-led constitutional amendments.
Not on the same page
Both chambers in the GOP-led Legislature agree with Gov. Ron DeSantis that these measures need to be addressed.
“We want to make sure that people have the ability to get their thoughts on the ballot but that it’s done without fraud, that it’s done in the right manner,” House Speaker Daniel Perez said earlier this week.
“Where that bill ends, we’ll see. I don’t believe that we’re all on the same page as of now. I think that we understand that there’s an issue at hand, and an issue that needs to be solved for us, but we are going to give the opportunity for our members to kind of work out the details of that. I don’t know if the House and the Senate are on the same page, if we’re in line with the governor. It’s my understanding that we’re all on different pages at this point, but it’s early.”
The bill has only one other stop in committee in the House before reaching the floor for a full vote. The Senate version has yet to go before its first committee stop.
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