TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – A key Senate panel on Monday approved a measure that would place a number of new restrictions on people and groups seeking to make changes to the state Constitution, the latest move in the Legislature’s years-long effort to curtail the ballot initiative process.
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Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was instrumental in November’s defeat of initiatives that would have enshrined abortion rights in the Constitution and authorized the use of recreational marijuana, has targeted the issue as one of his top priorities for the legislative session that started last week.
The Senate Ethics and Elections Committee approved a wide-ranging measure (SPB 7016) that would, among other things, prohibit felons or non-citizens from collecting petitions; require signed petition forms to include voters’ identifying information such as their driver’s license numbers or the last four digits of their Social Security numbers; and shrink from 30 days to 10 days the deadline for initiative sponsors to submit petitions to elections supervisors for verification. The bill would increase fines for petitions that are submitted late.
The proposal also would require elections supervisors to notify voters if their signatures are verified on petitions. Notification costs — which could be up to $1.50 per petition, on top of other existing costs — would have to be borne by initiative sponsors.
Critics of the legislation argued Monday that the additional restrictions would further hamstring the public’s ability to make changes to the Constitution, with the initiative process over the years used to raise the minimum wage, allow medical marijuana, restrict school class sizes and mandate funding to preserve land.
The ballot initiative process is already very difficult, Sen. Tina Polsky, D-Boca Raton, said before the Republican-controlled committee’s 6-3 party-line vote in favor of the measure.
“So there really is no reason for this except what just happened in the last election, that over 55%— very close to the threshold — people voted for initiatives that this current leadership, Legislature, does not like,” Polsky said.
The abortion-rights initiative received support from 57.2% of voters, while the recreational-marijuana measure received support from 55.9%. They fell short of the 60 percent approval needed to pass constitutional amendments.
Among more than a dozen people who spoke about the bill Monday, only a representative of the Florida Chamber of Commerce supported the proposal. The business group for years has led efforts to curb the ballot initiative process.
Sponsor Erin Grall, R-Vero Beach, said the bill is necessary to prevent fraud in the petition-gathering process.
“We’re talking about one of the foundational documents (the Constitution) of this state and the way in which we are governed. And if we do not have impeccable integrity in the way in which something is placed before the voters, we diminish the overall effect of that document,” Grall, an attorney, said.
The Senate committee adopted a series of tweaks to the bill, including a change that would ban the use of state money to advocate for or against a ballot initiative.
“The prohibition includes the use of state funds to publish, broadcast, or disseminate public service messages concerning an amendment or a revision on the ballot, regardless of whether the public service messages are limited to factual information,” the change said.
That proposal came after DeSantis flexed the full strength of his executive office to oppose last year’s marijuana and abortion initiatives. As an example, the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles released public-service announcements warning against driving while under the influence of marijuana and state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo released guidance warning about the dangers of pot and advising health-care providers to regularly drug-screen patients ages 12 and older.
“I thought that, in light of a citizen-initiative bill, comprehensive reform that we’re looking at now, and the fact that state dollars were used last year, that going forward, let’s get it right,” Sen. Jennifer Bradley, a Fleming Island Republican who sponsored the change, told reporters after the committee meeting.
The prohibition about state funds is not included in a similar ballot-initiative bill (HB 1205) that cleared a House subcommittee last week.
Both bills, however, include steps such as requiring initiative sponsors to post $1 million bonds to ensure any fines would be paid and requiring that paid petition circulators have criminal background checks and undergo training.
The bill “is a radical departure from current law” and is “very confusing and complicated,” Jonathan Webber, Florida policy director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, told the Senate committee.
“It creates shocking new criminal penalties for unsuspecting citizens and adds additional layers of blinding bureaucracy and arbitrary deadlines that will no doubt make it harder for citizens to act on their constitutional right,” Webber said.
The Senate bill also would require volunteers who gather signatures for ballot initiatives to register with the state, something only paid petition gatherers are required to do.
The bill is part of state lawmakers’ “systemic attack” on the ballot-initiative process, argued Debbie Chandler, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Florida.
“These proposals do not improve the process. They manipulate it to serve entrenched political and corporate interests by making it prohibitively difficult for citizens to place measures on the ballot,” she told the committee.