TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Should it be harder for a ballot initiative to pass in Florida?
Right now for an amendment to be enshrined in the Florida Constitution, it needs to be approved by 60% of the state’s voters.
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But Florida lawmakers are proposing to increase that threshold to 66.67%.
To do that, they’d need to ask voters via a ballot initiative.
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A Florida House subcommittee approved HJR 335 on Monday. The bill would put a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November to raise that approval threshold.
Currently, constitutional amendments are placed on the ballot by the Florida Legislature or by citizen campaigns. Recent successful campaigns have enshrined minimum wage increases and medical marijuana in the Florida Constitution, for instance. Groups behind these ballot measures say the initiatives are important because lawmakers often ignore the will of the voters.
The sponsor of the bill, State Rep. Rick Roth, R-West Palm Beach, says raising the threshold is the best way to make sure everyone understands a new constitutional amendment before they vote on it.
“A lot of times, campaigns do not really go with the facts,” Roth said. “They go with what they want you to feel, in order to get you to support the amendment. So, we just want to make sure that everybody understands what an amendment is really trying to do and that it will solve the problems we are trying to solve.”
But Democrats questioned the real purpose of making the constitutional amendments harder to approve during the committee hearing. State Rep. LaVon Bracy Davis, D-Ocoee, accused Republicans of pushing to increase the threshold because they don’t like the amendments that voters are passing.
“I don’t understand why we would want to move the goalposts. I don’t understand why we wouldn’t trust 60% of the voters, 60% of the people. Sixty is a big number,” Davis said.
Constitutional amendments used to only need a simple majority from voters to pass in Florida. In 2006, the voters approved an amendment to raise the approval threshold to 60%. The amendment only needed a simple majority to pass. It was approved by nearly 58% of voters.
If HJR 335 is approved by the Florida Legislature, it will go on the ballot in November.
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