Voters support Gov. DeSantis’ effort to make it harder for special interests to put issues on the ballot

A new statewide survey from the Florida Chamber of Commerce shows voters overwhelmingly support efforts to tighten the state’s process for putting constitutional amendments on the ballot.

The poll found more than three-quarters of voters (76%) would be more likely to support a lawmaker who voted to restrict the constitutional amendment process. That sentiment transcended party lines, with 78% of Republicans and no-party voters saying they would back lawmakers who vote in favor of tightening up the ballot initiative process, compared to 73% of Democrats.

The Chamber poll, released Thursday, did not include survey language, but its rundown of results suggests the failed effort to legalize cannabis for adult use (Amendment 3) is a driving factor. The polling memo specifically references “returning the process to the citizens and taking it out of the hands of special interests.”

“Out of state and special interest groups have attempted to circumvent the Florida Legislature by spending hundreds of millions of dollars pushing amendments to Florida’s Constitution,” Florida Chamber President and CEO Mark Wilson said. “Our poll shows Florida voters want Legislators to return the ballot initiative process to citizens initiatives and not those run by special interests.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis in January suggested changes to the constitutional amendment process as part of his call for a Special Session. In his comments, he pointed not to Amendment 3 and the $150 million spent to support the initiative, but to Amendment 4, the effort to enshrine abortion access into the state constitution.

“To have the amount of fraudulent petitions that were verified as fraudulent … that is a huge, huge problem,” he said at the time, according to Axios. That references DeSantis and his allies’ claims that at least some of the nearly 1 million petition signatures gathered to place the issue on the 2024 ballot were fraudulent.

DeSantis didn’t outline specifics for tightening the process, but it wouldn’t be the first time leaders in Tallahassee have sought to make it harder for anyone but the Legislature to put a question to voters.

The efforts date back to at least 2006 when lawmakers voted to put a referendum on the ballot increasing the threshold for constitutional amendment passage from 50% to 60%. Ironically, the referendum passed with less than the 60% threshold it sought to impose.

More recently, in 2020, lawmakers approved a measure that DeSantis approved to raise the threshold for citizen initiatives to trigger judicial review and prevented petition signatures gathered from being used in a future ballot. Critics at the time argued the measure would leave the process open only to wealthy individuals or deep pocketed special interests, with some nicknaming the measure a “ballot for billionaires.” That’s because it shortened the amount of time campaigns had to raise funds for the onerous petition gathering process.

The year prior, DeSantis led an effort cracking down on the petition gathering process by requiring petition gatherers to be paid by the hour, not by the petition. It also required petitions to include who was sponsoring them and how much was raised by in-state donors, with violations carrying steep fines.

The Chamber poll was taken Feb. 2-8 by Cherry Communications among 600 respondents. It has a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

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