Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Initiative under attack

While they have improved slightly, bills in the Legislature aimed at preventing petition fraud go beyond what is necessary, threatening the initiative process.

Given the stakes, it's both unsurprising and intolerable that dead people's names have appeared on some of Florida's recent constitutional amendment petitions. There is no evidence, however, that such hoary frauds are escaping detection by the supervisors of election. That's an important distinction that some legislators seem much too eager to overlook.

Both houses are considering bills (CS for SB 1996, CS for HB 1471) that go beyond what is reasonably necessary to identify and prosecute the con artists. They go so far beyond, in fact, as to suggest that the motive of the business lobbies pushing them is simply to prevent any more outbreaks of such popular democracy as the smoke-free workplace and minimum-wage amendments.

The bills have been getting better, but they're still not fairly balanced. At the moment, the House version is superior. Petition sponsors would have 45 days rather than 30, as proposed in the Senate bill, to submit signatures for verification. (There are no interim deadlines now.) The House also wisely dropped a provision requiring sponsors to issue revocation forms to voters who sign their petitions. That effectively compels amendment sponsors to oppose what they support; the Constitution does not allow the government to demand that of any citizen.

Other arguably unconstitutional provisions would forbid anyone other than an eligible Florida voter from circulating petitions even as a volunteer, and would make it a crime for sponsors to pay professional solicitors according to the number of signatures they turn in. The state's legitimate interest in preventing fraud is fully served - and more - by other provisions in the bill requiring extensive documentation by paid solicitors.

It is also needless harassment to stipulate, as both bills do, new petition forms for campaigns already under way after the legislation's Aug. 1 effective date. Those in progress should be grandfathered so long as they comply with reasonable provisions to ensure integrity.

These are not just technical issues. They have to do with how much, or how little, the Legislature respects the people of Florida, whose hard-won right to amend their own Constitution has never been under so fierce an assault.

[Last modified April 22, 2005, 00:43:11]