Add Florida to the growing list of states where lawmakers are intent on making it harder – if not impossible for citizens to use the initiative process to amend the state constitution.
The proposal – itself a constitutional amendment that 60 percent of voters would have to approve for it to take effect – seeks to raise the 60 percent approval threshold to 67 percent – a supermajority.
The amendment's sponsor, Republican state Rep. Rick Roth, told a committee back in February that he hoped his colleagues would get behind the measure because voters are getting too big for their britches:
“I hope you will at least agree with me that this constitutional amendment process should be used as intended, as a safety valve and not for every policy and any budget decision,” Roth told the committee. “The time is right now to ask our citizens to have a more deliberative process by requiring a bipartisan supermajority two-thirds support to amend our constitution.”
Roth's disdain for people exercising their rights aside…there's more to the push to clamp down on citizen initiatives than the alleged desire for deliberation:
Through the constitutional amendment process, Florida citizens have been able to raise the minimum wage, create a medical marijuana system and restore felons voting rights to in recent years – all measures that were never approved by the GOP-led Legislature, but were popular with the voting public.
And years before that, voters overwhelmingly approved term limits for legislators…which went over like a lead balloon in Tallahassee.
But let's assume lawmakers really are interested in a more deliberative, careful, considerate voting public. That's a noble aim, indeed. Such a public might also demand the same cool, calm sensibility from their elected officials – an even better thing for all concerned.
Politicians have no such desire, of course. They generally view voters as annoyances to be managed, not constituents to be served.
All the more reason to have a robust initiative process that allows citizens to bypass the political class and enact measures it believes are right and necessary directly. It might rub some prickly [pols the wrong way, but that's the point of direct democracy. Even in Florida.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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