Gov. Ron DeSantis’ goal to make it much more difficult for citizen-led constitutional amendments to pass in Florida is one step closer to happening after a House committee approved a measure that would add significant new hurdles for such initiatives.
The bill (HB 1205) sponsored by Lee County Republican Jenna Persons-Mulicka would make a series of changes to the state’s already extensive initiative-gathering process, which has been tightened over the past decade by the GOP-controlled Legislature. It passed on Wednesday on a party-line vote after more than two hours of sometimes intense reaction in public testimony.
Citing a report produced by the Office of Election Crimes and Security in January asserting that more than 100 representatives of the group attempting to pass a ballot measure to expand abortion rights in Florida committed crimes related to gathering petitions, Persons-Mulicka told the committee that the initiative process was “broken,” and thus reforms are required.
“We need to protect all Floridians and ensure that we have integrity in the initiative process,” she said.
But Democrats and the vast majority of those who spoke during the hearing were critical of the legislation, which they said would effectively kill the citizen-led amendment process.
“What this bill will do, as currently written, is make citizen-led initiative processes impossible in the state of Florida, unless you have billions to spend,” said Orlando Democratic Rep. Anna Eskamani. “You are creating new administrative burdens under the guise of integrity, that is really designed to restrict access and suppress the First Amendment rights of Floridians.”
Provisions in the legislation include:
- Requiring the petition sponsor to post a $1 million bond payable to the Division of Elections once the sponsor has obtained a letter from the department confirming that 25% of the requisite number of signatures has been obtained.
- If a person who is collecting or handling initiatives petitions is found to not be a U.S. citizen or is convicted of a felony without having his right to vote restored, the petition sponsor is liable for a $50,000 fine for each person.
- The bill revises the deadline by which petitions must be delivered by the petition sponsor to a supervisor of elections from 30 days to 10 days and increases the fines from a $50 flat fee for each late petition form to $50 for each day late for a total fine of up to $2,500 per late petition form. If the sponsor or petition circulator acted “willfully,” the bill increases the penalty from $250 for each petition form to $2,500.
- The bill requires all petition circulators — volunteers as well as paid staffers — to be residents of Florida. It says that before a paid petition circulator is registered, he or she must submit to a criminal background check.
- The bill creates a signature revocation process that allows a voter to revoke his or her signature from a petition form. The supervisor of elections must post on their website the total number of signatures revoked every month, and later every week. If the percentage rises to more than 10% of the total petitions received during that period, the Office of Election Crimes and Security is required to conduct a preliminary investigation and may report findings to the statewide prosecutor or applicable state attorney for prosecution.
Intense debate
For nearly two hours, an overwhelming number of public speakers denounced the bill, many claiming the GOP-controlled committee and Legislature simply don’t want to have the citizen-led amendment process continue.
“What’s really a fraud is that there’s a desire not to have citizen’s petitions anymore,” said Larry Collerton, a member of Orange County branch of the NAACP. “So instead of just flat out saying that, this basic show is being put on. You don’t want citizen initiatives. Just say that! Don’t pretend with this.”
Perhaps the most contentious piece of the legislation is the provision that would reduce the time that a petition sponsor has to deliver a signed petition from 30 days to 10 days, with the fines increased for every day that they are not returned.
“The 10-day turnaround time that this bill puts on is unreasonable for the tens of thousands of petitions that a citizen-led amendment sponsor needs to collect per week in order to qualify for the ballot,” said Amy Keith, executive director of Common Cause Florida. “On top of that, with that 10-day turnaround, we end up with absolutely unreasonable per petition fines, even if they make a simple error.”
But Pinellas County Republican Linda Chaney said the proposal was based on the fraud that she said was exposed in the 2024 petition-gathering process for specific amendments that was listed in the Office of Election Crimes and Security report.
“The Department of State did an investigation and they printed a 939 page-report and this bill is based on all of the issues that were identified in that report, so this is a very fact-based bill,” she maintained.
The bill will now move to the entire House for likely passage. The Senate version is being pushed by the Senate Committee on Ethics and Elections (SB 7016) that has one more committee stop before going to the floor in that chamber.
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This article originally appeared here and was republished with permission.
