Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Gun control group vows to continue fight
Organization seeks to get assault weapons ban on Florida’s ballot
A gun control group is vowing to continue its fight to get an assault weapons ban on Florida’s ballot, despite coming up short on signatures and facing opposition from GOP leaders in Tallahassee.
Ban Assault Weapons Now, which was founded after the Parkland massacre, has shifted its focus now to the 2022 election.
Last year, the Florida Legislature passed a law that made it harder and more expensive to get on Florida’s ballot.
“It threw a giant monkey wrench into our plans,” said Gail Schwartz, chairwoman of Ban Assault Weapons Now. “The Legislature wants to make it impossible for people to have a voice.”
The group was able to get about 145,000 verified signatures, far short of the 766,200 that needed to be submitted by Feb. 1.
The initiative is also facing a legal challenge from Republican Attorney General Ashley Moody and the National Rifle Association. The Florida Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday on the issue.
The Supreme Court is charged with evaluating ballot initiatives to ensure they are not misleading. Opponents argued voters won’t understand the scope of the ban, which they say would prohibit guns not commonly thought to be assault weapons. The initiative’s ballot summary defines an assault weapon as a semiautomatic rifle or shotgun capable of carrying more than 10 bullets.
The court will consider the arguments and make a ruling, which could force the ballot summary to be rewritten if it is deemed to be misleading. That would further hamper the campaign’s efforts to get on the 2022 ballot.
The Legislature in May passed a law that required paid signature gatherers to register with the state. The law also changed the business model for signature gatherers: They no longer can be paid by the signature, earning up to $4 for each verified voter, but instead must be compensated by the hour.
Supporters said those changes were needed to stop fraud, although there have been few cases of documented fraud happening in Florida’s ballot initiative process.
While well-funded campaigns already have found ways to meet the new requirements, the new law makes it more difficult for grassroots campaigns to succeed because it drives up the costs of gathering signatures.
“The reality is we have to hire people to stand out on the street corners and do this and that takes a lot of money,” Schwartz said. “We don’t have an angel donor who is going to give us $5 million. We don’t have corporate spon
sors.”
The group raised nearly $2.1 million, mostly through small donations, but that wasn’t enough, Schwartz said. The campaign should be able to use the signatures they’ve already collected for the 2022 effort, she said.
The backers of a ballot initiative to legalize recreational marijuana said the Legislature frustrated their petition as well. In a lawsuit, Make It Legal Florida argued that repeated problems with a Department of State registration database hurt their efforts and blocked them from getting on the 2020 ballot.
Campaigns that secured the required signatures spent significantly more than Ban Assault Weapons Now. For instance. Keep Our Constitution Clean raised nearly $9 million, entirely through secret dark money donors.
That group wants to make it harder to amend the state constitution by requiring citizen initiatives be approved twice by voters instead of once. Their petition is pending a Supreme Court review. Another item under review by the court would overhaul Florida’s primary election system and open it to all voters regardless of party affiliation.
Two items have been approved to be placed on Florida’s ballot. One would raise Florida’s minimum wage to $15. The other would stipulate only a citizen can vote in the state’s elections, something already required by state law.