TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The Florida House on Tuesday will take up numerous issues during a floor session, including a measure aimed at making it harder to put proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot.
The proposal (HJR 7093), sponsored by Rep. Bob Rommel, R-Naples, would dramatically increase petition-signature requirements for ballot initiatives.
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Currently, backers of ballot initiatives must meet two petition-signature requirements to take proposed constitutional amendments to voters. Both requirements are based on a calculation of 8 percent of the number of votes cast in the last presidential election year.
One of the requirements involves submitting an overall number of petition signatures that equal 8 percent of the votes cast statewide. For proposed constitutional amendments on the 2018 and 2020 ballots, that equated to submitting 766,200 petition signatures statewide, based on the number of votes cast in the 2016 election.
The other requirement says backers of ballot initiatives must submit petitions signatures that equal 8 percent of the votes cast in at least half of Florida’s congressional districts -- in effect forcing political committees to get signatures from various parts of the state. In 2018 and 2020, that meant hitting the target numbers in 14 of 27 congressional districts. Rommel’s proposal would make it harder to meet that second requirement. It would mandate backers of proposed constitutional amendments meet the targets in all congressional districts -- up from half.
A Senate version of the proposal (SJR 7062) is scheduled to be taken up Monday by the Senate Rules Committee.
If the House and Senate pass such a proposal, it would have to go before voters for ratification in November. That is because it would deal with changing part of the state Constitution that deals with petition signatures.