TALLAHASSEE—On Thursday, the Florida House passed another bill to make it more difficult for citizen groups to place constitutional amendments on the ballot. HB 1205 includes a series of new rules and penalties for petition drives associated with ballot initiatives.
The bill, which passed in a 76-31 vote, would require groups sponsoring such an amendment to post a $1 million bond after collecting a quarter of the required voter signatures. It would also restrict groups to sponsoring no more than one amendment at a time while limiting the amount of time a sponsor can remain active without meeting the signature threshold for review.
The bill would reduce the time groups have to submit signed petitions from 30 to 10 days while increasing fines for late submissions, which could be up to $2,500 per form or $5,000 if delivered after the February 1 election-year deadline. Petitions that are collected but never turned in could also lead to penalties.
Petition circulators would be limited to Florida residents, while paid circulators would be limited to U.S. citizens and would be required to pass a criminal background check, complete state training, and submit a Florida driver’s license or ID number and the last four digits of their Social Security number.
Petition forms would need to include additional voter information, such as a driver’s license or partial Social Security number, and display notices warning about legal penalties. Supervisors of Elections would only be able to validate forms that include all required fields.
Those who signed a petition would receive notices in the mail stating whether their signature was verified. The notice would include a prepaid form allowing them to revoke their signature for personal reasons or if they claimed not to have signed it.
A similar bill is moving through the Florida Senate.
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David Daniels
And the expense of sending the individual notices and revocation forms to each of the hundreds of thousands of petition signers would be paid by the citizen initiative group. This is a shameful bill aimed at preventing the public from overriding anti good governance laws like the law the allowed Manatee government to bill Joe McClash $250k just for trying to get a court opinion. We need to hold our state legislators Robinson and Conerly accountable for taking away our voice.
Sunday, April 6, 2025 Report this
johnschussler
Direct democracy is a needed safety valve.
It is a check on the legislature. To pass new legislation or to repeal existing legislation or to amend the state constitution.
Lawmakers tend to oppose citizen initiatives, especially the party in control. Whoever has the power wants to keep the power.
Our state legislature would like to eliminate citizen ballot initiatives. The legislature controls the rules so have made them nearly impossible to get on the ballot. One party state government is the problem. Open primary elections are a solution, but the only way to get open primary elections is by citizen ballot initiatives. That is why the state legislature is putting them out of reach of citizens.
Sunday, April 6, 2025 Report this