Bills moving through the Florida Legislature this session would make it much harder and far more expensive for such initiatives to ever reach the ballot in the first place.

If Senate Bill 7016 or House Bill 1205 becomes law, any groups sponsoring a ballot initiative, such as the recent successful citizen-led minimum wage and medical marijuana amendments, would have to put up a $1 million bond with the Division of Elections.

They also would have to run background checks and face fines of up to $50,000 if they hire someone (paid or unpaid) who isn’t a U.S. citizen and Florida resident to collect petitions, which would now have to include a voter’s driver license or state ID number or the last four digits of their Social Security number.

Petitions must be sent to local Supervisors of Elections within 10 days, instead of the current 30, with fines for late submissions increased from $50 to up to $2,500. Supervisors would also be required to individually notify each voter who signed a petition that their name has been verified and allow them to revoke it, and charge the ballot initiative’s sponsor whatever it costs to do so.

Supporters of the bills say they are needed to claim down on rampant fraud, pointing to a January report from the Office of Election Crimes and Security citing complaints of petition gatherers signing voters’ names, stealing personal information to fill out petition forms, and submitting the names of dead people.

Critics say it’s just a move to make sure citizens can’t create policies that the governor and Legislature oppose, effectively stripping Floridians of a constitutional right by adding insurmountable obstacles to the process.

The bills have been opposed by the ACLU, State Voices Florida, the League of Women Voters of Florida, Florida for All, the Cleo Institute, Common Cause Florida, Equal Ground Education and Action Fund, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Florida AFL-CIO, according to Florida Politics.

The House bill passed last week and was sent to the Senate. The Senate’s version passed out of committee on a 14-5 vote and heads to the Senate floor.

What does SB 7016, Initiative Petitions Proposing an Amendment to the State Constitution do?

The sweeping bill makes the following changes to how petitions for proposed constitutional amendments would work:

• Limits political committees to only sponsoring one amendment initiative petition per election cycle
• Requires a sponsor to post a $1 million bond with the Division of Elections after they have collected 25% of the necessary signatures to cover any potential fines. The bond requirement may be waived if the sponsor claims undue burden but if they do, they are prohibited from paying people to circulate petitions
• Requires that petitions must be one page, front and back, with at least a 10-point font
• Petition signatures must also include the voter’s Florida driver license or ID card number, or the last four digits of their Social Security number
• Requires the person circulating a petition to verify that the petition was completed and signed by the voter in their presence
• Prohibits anyone, paid or unpaid, from collecting more than two signed petition forms in addition to their own or those of immediate family members unless they register as a petition circulator
• Requires background checks and mandatory training for anyone to become a petition circulator
• Requires that petition circulators must be U.S. citizens and Florida residents who have not been convicted of a felony and have not had their right to vote restored. Sponsors who hire someone who isn’t a citizen or has been convicted could be fined $50.000
• Reduces the number of days a sponsor has to submit signed petition forms to the appropriate supervisor of elections from 30 down to 10, subject to fines of $50 for every day a petition is late, up to $2,500. The current law is a flat fee of $50 for late petitions
• Requires supervisors of elections of all 67 of Florida’s counties to notify each voter on submitted petitions that their signature has been verified and give the voters the option to revoke their signatures. Supervisors of elections would be able to pass the costs of doing that to the amendment’s sponsor, along with other “operational and personnel costs”
• Increases fine for intentionally non-submitted petitions to $5,000
• Fines sponsors $100 for each day late for submitting a signed petition form after the deadline, up to $5,000, and a flat $5,000 per petition form if it was done intentionally
• Makes it a third-degree felony for a petition circulator to fill in a voter’s missing information or to copy or retain voter’s personal information for any reason besides the petition
• Fines a sponsor $5,000 each time a petition circulator signs another person’s name or a fictitious name, or fills in missing information on a petition
• Prohibits sponsors or petition circulators from mailing or providing a petition form with the voter’s information prefilled, with a fine of $50 per petition

The bills also require the state Office of Elections Crimes and Security to investigate if more than 10% of submitted petitions during any reporting period are deemed invalidated. Groups routinely gather more signatures than are needed, with the expectation that some will be rejected.

“No citizen-led amendment has ever reached a 90% validation rate, like not even 70%, in the history of Florida,” Rep. Dotie Joseph, D-North Miami, said about the House bill. “What you’re asking for is an impossible threshold.”

The Senate version includes a provision prohibiting the use of taxpayer dollars to influence ballot measures.

The House specifically removes the director of the Legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research as a voting member of the panel that calculates the financial impact of a proposed initiative. Last year, Amy Baker, the current director, differed from DeSantis’ office, the House and the Senate on the financial impact of the abortion amendment.

What are citizen initiatives?

Most often, Florida law is crafted, discussed and approved or rejected by elected lawmakers. However, under the Florida Constitution, citizens may collect enough signatures to put their own proposed amendments on the ballot for all Florida voters to vote on. (Lawmakers also can pass a measure to amend the constitution.)

The Sunshine Laws in Florida mandating transparency in government were the result of the first successful citizen-led amendment, with a heavy push from then-Gov. Reubin Askew. In more recent times, Florida voters have passed popular amendments to raise the minimum wage in the state and legalize medical marijuana after legislators failed to respond to voter needs.

Legislators have added obstacles to make citizen-led initiatives harder. In 2006, they put a measure on the ballot to require 60% of the vote. And a bill passed in 2021 put a $3,000 cap on donations for ballot measures, but it was knocked down by the courts.