Nov. 6 will be here before you know it, and Florida voters will have a lot of choices to make. Several of these choices will be on amendments to Florida’s constitution. According to Miami Sun-Sentinel, there will be 12 amendments on the ballot in November, numbered from 1 to 7, and 9 to 13 (Amendment 8 was removed from the ballot by the Florida Supreme Court). These amendments cover a variety of topics, from government meeting dates, to vaping, and dog racing. The problem: the individual amendments also jump around in topic.
For an example of this, let’s take a closer look at Amendment 9. Amendment 9 does two things: bans oil drilling in Florida’s territorial waters and bans vaping indoors. Those two things don’t seem to have much to do with each other, do they? And yet, they’re smashed together into one amendment, leaving voters who may like one part but not the other in an unenviable position. Amendment 9 isn’t the only example of this. Amendment 6 would expand the rights of crime victims while also raising the retirement age of judges from 70 to 75. Amendment 7 would raise the number of votes needed on the university board of trustees or the state board of governors to raise any university fees (excluding tuition), provide death benefits and waiving of some educational costs to spouses of fallen military members and first responders, and place the state’s college system in the Florida Constitution. Amendment 10 would also accomplish a whopping three things in one: move state legislative sessions to even-numbered years in January, require the creation of a state Office of Domestic Security and Counter-Terrorism and require the legislature for a Department of Veteran Affairs, and require all counties to have certain elected offices (such as sheriff, tax collector and supervisor of elections).
If you think this haphazard grouping of topics is a problem, you’re not alone. According to the Tampa Bay Times, the fallen Amendment 8 had the same problem. While the main thrust of the bill would have transferred control over charter schools from local school district to the state, the amendment would have also imposed school board term limits and enshrine civics education in the state constitution. Though the main reason the amendment was removed was because the language was found to be unclear, the Tampa Bay Times said the multiple topics the amendment covered was also a concern. Columnist John Romano of the Tampa Bay Times also pointed out the combined nature of the amendments, saying “the bundles entice voters to approve an unpopular idea because it is tethered to a more happy-sounding proposal.” Romano called this scheme “a ploy” that he would not be “snookered by.”
Now that we know what the situation is, the question is: who’s responsible for it? The answer is: a body known as the Florida Constitution Revision Commission (CRC). According to Ballotpedia, the CRC is a 37-member board that meets every 20 years to propose and review amendments to Florida’s constitution. The board is empowered to forward proposed amendments directly to the ballot. In an interview with WLRN of Miami, CRC member Tim Cerio said the CRC bundled amendments in an effort to shorten the ballot and reduce voter fatigue. Cerio also argued that even the disconnected amendments had an overarching theme. For Amendment 9 (oil drilling and vaping), Cerio said that theme was “clean air, clean water.” While voter fatigue and ballot length are legitimate issues, packing together relatively unrelated issues and telling voters to vote yes or no on both is a terrible solution, and the justification for this seems rather flimsy. In addition, none of this would be an issue if there were simply fewer amendments on the ballot, and for that we can also blame the CRC.
The CRC last met in 2017, and according to the Tampa Bay Times, proposed 7 of the 12 amendments on the November ballot. To give the CRC credit, not all the amendments it proposed for November are duds. Amendment 12 would expand ethics rules by banning elected officials from lobbying the body they were elected to for 6 years after leaving office and would ban elected officials from using their office to receive a “disproportionate benefit” for themselves, their families or their business. Amendment 13 would ban betting on greyhound racing in Florida and eventually ban greyhound racing outright in 2021, which will please many dog lovers and animal rights activists. Still, the CRC has been overzealous, proposing too many amendments and then awkwardly having to bundle them together so an already-long ballot can be a little less long. As a show of protest against the CRC’s bundling, voters should reject the worst offenders (Amendments 6, 7, 9, and 10) out of principle, and then push for a reform of the CRC that would limit how many amendments it can put on the ballot and ban such bundling in the future. Maybe then Florida’s amendment system can be a little saner.
Jason Zappulla is a UF history junior. His column normally appears on Mondays.
