Legislators to voters: Butt out on constitutional amendments
About a dozen years ago lawmakers decided it was too easy for the public to change the constitution, so in 2006 it asked voters to change the threshold for approval from 50 percent to 60 percent.
The ballot question passed with 57.8 percent of the voters saying yes. (Alert readers will note that the question did not get the 60 percent it takes to pass an amendment today.)
But never mind that. Now some lawmakers want to raise the standard even higher — to two thirds, or 66.7 percent of the vote.
Let’s take a look at some of the many amendments that passed in recent years, even with the 60 percent requirement, but would have lost if the two-thirds requirement had been in place:
Last year’s Amendment 4, which restores the rights of exfelons to vote once they’ve paid their debt to society.
Amendments 2, 9 and 11 in 2012, which offered tax breaks to disabled veterans, spouses of service members killed while on duty, and low-income seniors.
Amendments 5 and 6 in 2010 — collectively known as “fair districts,” which were designed to stop state lawmakers from drawing legislative and congressional district maps for political purposes.
Amendment 3 in 2008, exempted from property taxes improvements designed to harden homes against storms and conserve energy.
Curiously, while the bills proposed in the House and Senate would force two-thirds of voters to approve amendments, it preserves the 60 percent level of votes needed in the Legislature to put amendments on the ballot.
To summarize, lawmakers want to make it harder for you to change the constitution, but not for them to put amendments on the ballot.
We suspect the same forces that coalesced around the 60 percent amendment in 2006 are back at work.
That amendment was put on the ballot by the Legislature two years after Floridians approved setting a minimum wage that was more generous than the federal government’s. Those who supported making it harder to approve amendments were the usual powerful suspects: agriculture, insurance, energy, chambers of commerce, etc.
The latest initiative to weaken the power of voters comes as Orlando attorney John Morgan launches a 2020 amendment effort to raise the minimum wage in Florida to $15 per hour over a period of years. It took Morgan two swings of the bat to get medical marijuana approved by voters. It’s possible that Florida’s power brokers are gambling it might take a couple of tries to get a higher minimum wage passed, and a two-thirds requirement approved in 2020 would raise the bar for the $15 minimum wage if it went on the ballot in 2022.
Whatever chess game might be underway, none of it changes the contemptuous nature of this bill, which — no surprise — was filed by state Sen. Dennis Baxley, father of stand your ground, defender of the Confederacy and friend to all manner of bad ideas. A companion bill in the House was co-introduced by another Lake County legislator, freshman Anthony Sabatini, whose fingerprints are smeared on some of the worst bills filed in the House so far this year.
If this issue sounds familiar, it should.
This state has a history of trying to make it harder for citizens to change the constitution.
In 2011, the Legislature decided that groups should have only two years, rather than four, to gather the hundreds of thousands of signatures they need to get an amendment on the ballot. In 2017 this same two-thirds requirement was introduced but failed. Last spring the commission that convenes every 20 years to propose changes to the constitution hatched the completely undemocratic idea of applying the current 60 percent threshold to all voters, not just those who went to the polls. In other words, someone who didn’t vote would still be counted as a no vote. Thankfully, that idea went into the dustbin.
What’s happening is an assault on voters, and they shouldn’t put up with it. They need to call or write their representatives in Tallahassee and make clear their displeasure with these attempts to marginalize voters. You can find your representative by Googling “Online Sunshine.” That will take you to websites for the Florida Senate and House of Representatives.
Let them know these legislative power grabs need to end.
Editorials are the opinion of the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board and written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Rosemary O’Hara, Sergio Bustos, David Lyons and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson.