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The voter initiative is a valuable right of Floridians, but the Legislature wants to make it more difficult for voters to take matters into their own hands.
Had it always been as difficult to amend the state Constitution as some lobbies and legislators want it to be, Florida still would be stagnating under the one that unrepentant former slaveholders wrote in 1885. When it was replaced, 54.2 percent of the voters said yes. That wasn't close, but it fell short of the high hurdle - 60 percent - now being urged on the Legislature by special interests that fear what might yet come out of power in the hands of Florida's people.
Some voters opposed the 1968 Constitution because they didn't think it sufficiently progressive to reward the quarter-century of struggle that went into it. A few thought it went too far. For many, however, the redeeming difference was the proposed process of initiative, to protect the people against any future abuses of power in Tallahassee.
That's still the issue. During recent debate, a senator remarked that a century ago half the people in the chamber wouldn't have been allowed to vote. His point was that minorities need to be protected from majority power. He should also have noted, however, that merely half a century ago, nobody's vote mattered with the majority of senators who sat there. Florida was ruled by a rural clique representing small counties with fewer than 15 percent of the state's swiftly growing population. It took the U.S. Supreme Court to break their stranglehold. There was no initiative then. Florida's present initiative process is the legacy of the fight for fair representation.
Misrule is as rampant in Tallahassee today as it was then. Superficially, all Floridians are now equally represented. But in fact, as this page has said many times, the election districts are rigged to deny most voters most of the time the opportunity for any meaningful choice. That such abuse still festers speaks cautionary volumes about any precipitous restrictions on the public's right to take matters into their own hands.
With the session more than half over, only the Senate has acted on its constitutional proposals. This much can be said for them: They are better than the House measures still pending in committee.
The Senate applies the proposed 60 percent voter approval threshold to all amendments, the Legislature's along with those the people submit. The House - upon what meat do those Caesars feed? - targets only initiatives. The amendments the legislators submit to the ballot would continue to earn ratification with only 50 percent plus one of the public's vote.
The Senate provides for the Supreme Court to block initiatives that, like pregnant pigs or bullet trains, are not weighty enough for a constitution. The House bill forbids any initiatives on purposes that could be accomplished by law, regardless of whether the Legislature would ever fairly consider them. Caesars, indeed.
A measure in the House would require any group proposing an initiative that would cost more than $1-million to specify the taxes or fees to finance it. Then the initiative would have to be approved by two thirds of everyone turning out at the polls. The Senate, to its credit, wants no part of that.
A sad side of the Senate debate was the missed opportunity to empower the people to pass ordinary laws by initiative. Whatever the case for protecting the Constitution by restricting the initiative, the result necessarily involves limiting the people's power. A statutory initiative provision would compensate for that, but Senate President Jim King didn't want that reasonable compromise to be on the table. Among those who favor it: Sen. Rod Smith, D-Gainesville, an architect of the Senate's pending package.
Smith says he would be willing to lead a petition campaign to create the statutory initiative. There's an irony: What he has just voted for would make it harder for him to accomplish what he was obliged to leave out.
Neither house, strangely, has dealt with the most obvious question. If it should take 60 percent of the voters to amend the Constitution, shouldn't it also take 60 percent to write that restriction into the Constitution? That could be done simply by writing such a condition into the clause setting an effective date. House members should insist on it.