Gullible Florida voters sided in 2006 with Big Sugar and the Chamber of Commerce in making it tougher to amend our State Constitution, requiring 60% of the vote. Will we be fooled again? Now, the corporations want to make the required margin 67% of the vote.
People in Ohio, South Dakota and Kansas are rejecting Florida-style laws. And Governor DeSANTIS campaign is not doing well.
Good insights from Scott Maxwell at Orlando Sentinel:
The rest of America isn’t buying the Florida version of ‘democracy’
Scott Maxwell column, Orlando Sentinel)
There’s an interesting phenomenon in America right now where other states aren’t buying the politics Florida is selling.
Some of that is evidenced by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ flailing presidential campaign, where the culture-war tactics many Floridians seem to relish are going over like a lead balloon nationally. (Most Americans just don’t understand the obsession with Disney and drag queens.)
But there’s something deeper and more systemic about the Florida version of “democracy” that other Americans are rejecting. We saw it most recently a few weeks ago in Ohio.
There, state legislators asked residents to follow Florida’s lead and make it tougher on themselves to amend their state constitution. Specifically, Ohio Republicans teamed up with a Florida-based political group to ask voters to raise the threshold for future amendments from a simple majority to 60%.
Their argument in Ohio was the same as it was here in Florida — that citizens can’t be trusted with something as important as a state constitution
Voters there were told: Make it harder on yourselves. Leave the law-making to politicians like us who always know best. Don’t you want to be like Florida?
The answer was resounding: Hell, no.
Ohioans rejected the plan by a 57-43 margin.
Residents in super-conservative South Dakota offered an even heartier rejection to the Make-America-Florida model when they rebuked a similar 60% proposal by a 67-33 margin in that state’s last election.
Basically, residents in other states are asking themselves: Why on earth would we shut down one of the few direct pipelines to democracy left — and cede more power to the politicians and special interests?
It’s a question I wish more Floridians had asked themselves when they bought the big-business-backed campaign to increase this state’s threshold to 60% back in 2006.
We’ll talk more about how that came about in a minute. But what you really need to know is that these campaigns are really about politicians trying to keep power away from the people they represent.
They do so on behalf of special interests that don’t like it when voters support things like stronger environmental regulations or higher minimum wages. And on behalf of ideological groups that know they’re on the unpopular side of issues like abortion. Quite specifically, abortion.
The state that really freaked out abortion-rights opponents is Kansas. Kansas, you see, is a very conservative state. Yet when voters there were asked whether they wanted to keep abortion legal in that state, 59% said yes.
Abortion opponents quickly realized that, if they couldn’t keep voters in a deep-red state like Kansas on their side, they couldn’t keep hardly anyone.
So instead of trying to win over voters, they decided to move the goalposts — by asking states to change the threshold for statewide votes to 60%.
See what happens there? Suddenly a vote of 59% of the people — a landslide in modern political terms — is a loss. The minority rules.
Think about all the amendments Floridians have passed — calling for smaller class sizes, more environmental spending, quality pre-K programs, Fair Districts and civil rights for former felons. GOP lawmakers hated every one of those successful citizen votes and often tried to thwart their implementation until the courts ordered them to follow the constitution they swore to uphold.
That’s why, back in 2006, they teamed up with the Florida Chamber of Commerce — which was angry that Floridians had just voted to increase the minimum wage to $6.15 an hour — to ask Floridians to make it harder on themselves to enact future changes.
Originally, Florida voters were skeptical. But the limit-your-own-powers campaign was well-financed by deep-pocketed interests like U.S. Sugar, homebuilders, Realtors and Publix. And it passed with 58% of the vote.
That remains one of the most wicked ironies in the history of Florida politics: Fewer than 60% of voters amended the constitution in a way that required more than 60% of voters any time after that.
Since the effort worked in Florida, the politicians and billionaires tried to duplicate their success in places like Ohio and South Dakota. In Ohio, they even gave their campaign a similar-sounding name. In Florida, it was called “Protect Our Constitution.” In Ohio, it was called “Save Our Constitution,” and it received funding from the Florida-based and billionaire-backed Foundation for Government Accountability.
They also tried to use the same arguments they used in Florida, claiming the constitution is some sort of sacred document which should rarely be amended.
There is no more malarkey-filled claim.
First of all, Florida’s constitution isn’t some ancient, hallowed text. It was last ratified in the late 1960s.
Second, citizens aren’t the ones who’ve tried to amend the state constitution more than 300 times. That was Tallahassee politicians and their appointees — pushing to insert things like nonbinding objections to Obamacare in our supposedly sacred text.
Most importantly, Florida lawmakers haven’t provided citizens with any other way to enact laws that the politicians refuse. In some places, citizens can vote for new laws that aren’t actually part of the Constitution. But Florida politicians don’t allow that. So they’ve basically said: The only way we will let you pass a new law is through a constitutional amendment … and we think that’s an inappropriate way for you to pass a new law. It’s like listening to the Mad Hatter.
They’ve also placed gobs or hurdles in front of citizens trying to gather petitions for amendment drives. And after successfully moving the goalposts to 60%, GOP legislators now want to raise it to 67%.
I doubt Floridians will bite this time. If anything, citizens would be more prone to undo the 60% threshold, realizing we now live in a state that empowers the minority.
Regardless of what Floridians decide, voters in other states — both red and blue — who are being asked if they want to “Make America Florida” are saying: No freakin’ way.
smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com
1 comment:
Trump supporters are now sociopaths if they support. Wonder how so many Germans turned into sociopaths in the 1930's? You're looking at it. Trumpism is an antisocial movement.
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