Florida Republican lawmakers show contempt for voters by trying to muzzle them | Opinion

It’s become a common alternative for Floridians who say lawmakers are not listening to their real-world concerns about social justice, the environment and voters rights.

They have used popular citizens’ initiatives — a constitutional amendment — to get an issue on the statewide ballot by collecting enough signatures through petition drives.

And because there have been some high-profile successes, some state lawmakers want to put up roadblocks to the process, of course.

Among the most recent successful citizens initiatives:

In 2014, Floridians voted to buy environmentally sensitive lands using real-estate transaction tax revenues. The Florida Water and Land Legacy Amendment, referred to as Amendment 1, was approved by almost 75 percent of voters.

In 2018, 60 percent of Florida voters passed a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights to most felons released from prison.

But both hard-fought victories have been undermined, sabotaged and hogtied by Florida lawmakers and the state’s back-to-back Republican governors ever since.

Now lawmakers want to smother such grassroots voters’ initiatives before they get off the ground, creating a number of new provisions that would drive up the costs of accessing direct democracy and tie up the process in red tape.

In other words, they’re silencing their constituents.

Senate Bill 1794, scheduled to be heard by the Senate Rules Committee on Wednesday, is a direct assault on democracy — silencing the voice of the people. This onerous bill should die. If it doesn’t, voters should rise up against all who vote for its passage for daring to try to muzzle them.

The truth is that leaders of the Republican-dominated Legislature fear citizens’ initiatives could apply to issues such as minimum wage, Medicaid expansion and open primaries, which is already under way. SB 1794 would thwart those efforts.

The bill proposes:

Increasing both the number of petition signers statewide to 33 percent from 10 percent and the number of congressional districts from which the signers come — to 50 percent from 25 percent.

This is a chilling increase in the number of petitions signatures that must be collected before the review of a proposed initiative begins.

Requiring a supervisor of elections to charge the actual cost for verifying a petition signature and requiring the Department of State to determine the actual cost annually. Currently, the cost of verification is 10 cents per signature.

Requiring Florida’s secretary of State to submit an initiative petition to the Senate president and the speaker of the House.

Why? As created, the initiative process is designed to be separate from the legislative process.

Requiring the ballot to include statements indicating the name of an initiative’s sponsor; the percentage of in-state contributions received for the proposal and whether the sponsor used out-of-state petition circulators. This comes from fear of outside forces influencing Florida. (Of course, campaign contributions from out of state are always welcome.)

The true intent of this legislation is swipe power from the voters for doing the job that lawmakers fail to do.

If that isn’t the clearest sign yet of Republican lawmakers’ contempt for the people they represent, we don’t know what is.