When the Legislature is not responsive to voters or when industry lobbyists exert an undue level of influence on the political process, the ballot initiative process is the only tool Floridians have to directly address important issues.
Eliminating the citizens' ballot initiative has long been a priority for the Florida Chamber of Commerce, Associated Industries of Florida, the Florida Retail Federation and other big-business groups since the passage of the Class Size and the State Minimum Wage amendments, two amendments they vigorously opposed but were unable to stop at the ballot box. Senate Bill 900 represents another part of a multi-stage strategy to end the initiative process. Gov. Charlie Crist should veto it for its attempt to place unreasonable restrictions on signature-gathering -- for instance, a 30-day deadline for submitting signed petitions -- in an already harshly restricted petition process to get initiatives on the ballot.
Florida's Constitution is the most difficult to amend among the states with a ballot initiative, thanks to the 60 percent supermajority required for amendment passage, the mandatory supreme court review of ballot language, a strict single-subject rule, one of the highest numbers of signatures required for ballot placement and a requirement that signatures be gathered from at least half of Florida's congressional districts.
Florida PIRG and other members of the Save the Voters' Voice coalition believe that voters should have the right to amend their constitution. This avenue of direct democracy is important in Florida partly because there is no statutory initiative process allowing Floridians to create laws rather than constitutional amendment, but also because elected officials will not truly be accountable to the public through the power of the vote until we address large systemic issues like our flawed redistricting process and our campaign finance system.
Claims by legislators that citizens are cluttering up the constitution are largely a way to deflect attention from the fact that legislators amend the constitution almost three times as often as citizens through the use of legislative amendments not subjected to the same scrutiny.
We urge Gov. Crist to protect the ballot initiative by vetoing SB 900.
Ashwell is legislative advocate for the Florida Public Interest Research Group (www.floridapirg.org), a non-profit public-interest advocacy organization.
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