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Muzzling the voters

Lawmakers have voted for measures designed to sharply restrict the power of Floridians to make themselves heard through the initiative process.

"The public be damned!," as railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt infamously remarked, was the order of the day on Tuesday in the Florida Legislature. Vanderbilt would have been overjoyed by how Florida's big business lobbies were calling the tune.

The House passed three constitutional amendments and an outrageous bill collectively intended to stifle the public's right of initiative. The Senate Judiciary Committee approved its version of the bill (CS for SB 1996, HB 1471) despite ample misgivings over its constitutionality.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Dan Webster, R-Winter Garden, marveled at a hypocrisy: The Florida Chamber of Commerce lobbying for restrictions on how certain businesses pay their employees. His concern: a provision making it a crime to pay petition gatherers "directly or indirectly" according to the number of signatures they secure. Other senators cited a 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision that will likely be a precedent for overturning that. Still, Webster and his committee approved it on a 5-3 party-line vote.

In Meyer vs. Grant, the court unanimously overturned a Colorado law forbidding payment for signatures. Such a restriction, the court said, "trenches upon an area in which the importance of First Amendment protections is "at its zenith.' . . . The burden that Colorado must overcome to justify this criminal law is well-nigh insurmountable."

The court has yet to rule whether states can bar payment based on the number of signatures, but three of five state laws saying so have been struck down by federal district judges. The Florida Legislature has not heard an iota of evidence that such a radical restriction is necessary to prevent petition fraud.

Despite recent amendments, the bills go far beyond what's reasonably necessary. The intent is not to police initiatives but to suppress them. Under both versions, valid voter signatures could be discarded by the thousands because of technical accounting errors by solicitors. Even volunteers would be suspect.

The House-passed constitutional amendments would require 60 percent of the voters to ratify any subsequent constitutional amendment, (HJR 1723); limit initiatives to a narrow range of fundamental issues (HJR 1727); and require two-thirds approval by everybody voting in an election to approve any amendment that would levy or raise a tax or cause significant spending (HJR 1741). These are all unjustified infringements on the inherent rights of the people, although narrowing the issues ripe for amendments would be acceptable if it also allowed the people to propose ordinary laws by initiative. The last word on these will be that of the voters, however, and we are confident that it will be a thunderous "No!"

But voters would be powerless to stop the effort to interfere with gathering initiative signatures, SB 1996/HB 1471, which the governor is eager to sign.

"This bill two weeks ago was a piece of garbage," said Sen. Walter "Skip" Campbell, D-Fort Lauderdale. "Now, it just stinks."

He was wrong. It's still a piece of garbage.

[Last modified April 28, 2005, 01:18:21]