Florida’s Citizen Ballot Initiative law is on life support but it’s not dead yet
The Smart & Safe Florida campaign, a well-financed effort to add recreational marijuana to the Florida Constitution has submitted more than 1.7 million signatures. The requirement to make it to the ballot is about 880,000 signatures by February 1st. However, the DeSantis Administration’s procedural games have successfully stopped this effort which missed the petition goal by less than 100,000 signatures. This is important because if the campaign does not succeed in placing their question on the ballot then Florida’s constitutionally-protected citizen initiative effectively dies. This would send a signal to other states to replicate this effort. These procedural games will also have a meaningful impact on vote by mail and the ability of candidates to qualify by petition.
The DeSantis Administration’s procedural games rely on invalidating already validated petitions through administrative directives:
1) To invalidate petitions collected by mail retroactively applying a law change six months after those petitions were first validated.
2) To invalidate petitions signed by “inactive” voters, those who haven’t voted in at least 2 election cycles but are still allowed to vote.
3) To invalidate petitions collected by out-of-state petition gatherers after a new law change banned their use.
4) To not count validated petitions, submitted prior to the deadline by the campaign, because the county supervisor of elections transmitted the new count to the state after the deadline.
It’s not over yet for this effort. The campaign can still overcome the shortfall. There are over 54,000 validated petitions reported by county supervisors of elections and another 70,646 invalidated after-the-fact petitions being contested in court. The deadline to place referendum questions on the November ballot is still months away.
Over the next 60 days, the campaign will be asking the courts to intervene (like here) and require the state to justify its actions affecting our rights to petition the government.
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Also published by the Florida Cannabis Action Network https://www.flcan.org
Cover photo courtesy of the Smart & Safe Florida Campaign https://smartandsafeflorida.com/