Floridians did something this past week that confused most of America.
A majority voted to protect abortion rights — and yet lost.
That’s not normally how democracy works. Usually, the campaign with the most votes wins.
But in Florida, the rules are different. They’ve been rigged by big business and politicians to gum up the only direct pipeline to democracy citizens have left — the constitutional amendment process.
So on Tuesday, when 57% of residents in conservative Montana decided that politicians have no right to dictate health care decisions for women, the measure passed. But when 57% of Floridians voted for a similar law here, the measure failed.
A spokeswoman for the opposition claimed: “Florida’s voters again had the choice — do we want to be like California? Their answer was ‘NO.’”
Actually, their answer was yes — by a sizable margin. But the campaign against this amendment never let facts get in the way.
After all, the states that have protected reproductive rights aren’t just California. They include solidly Republican states like Montana, Kansas, Arizona and Missouri, full of citizens who believe in limited government and personal privacy.
But damn the facts. All the opponents had to do was convince 40.01% of Floridians to oppose the amendment, and the losers would win.
So how did we get to a place where the minority rules?
It started 20 years ago when Florida business leaders were furious that citizens had passed an amendment to raise the minimum wage to $6.15 an hour. The state’s business lobby, led by the Florida Chamber of Commerce and Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association, was outraged. And they knew that, if another wage hike was proposed down the road, more than 50% of citizens would support that as well. Business interests were also worried about a proposal that might stymie quick-and-cheap development. So they had an idea: Change the rules. Make the new threshold for approval 60%.
But they had a problem. That change required support from voters. And how do you convince citizens to strip themselves of power?
With pregnant pigs. A few years earlier, Floridians had voted for an animal-cruelty prevention measure that basically said hog farms weren’t allowed to confine pregnant sows to cages so small the pigs couldn’t move.
The law made sense to most people. And legislators could’ve just passed it themselves without putting it in the constitution. But the politicians refused, kowtowing to agribusiness lobbyists. So supporters had only one option, a constitutional amendment, since Florida doesn’t allow citizens to mount drives to enact new laws; only constitutional changes.
The anti-cruelty measure passed with broad support. But business backers decided it gave them a good talking point: Pregnant pigs don’t belong in the constitution.
So, Big Business trotted out the pregnant pigs and the notion that some issues just aren’t constitutionally worthy as part of their own amendment drive to make future amendment drives tougher to pass. And it worked.
In one of the greatest ironies in Florida politics, that amendment requiring future amendments to get 60% passed with a 58% vote, meaning it failed to get 60% itself.
That 2006 campaign was bankrolled by Realtors, homebuilders, Big Sugar and companies like Publix, TECO Energy and Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
If you want to know why 57 percent support isn't enough to pass a ballot initiative in Florida, the answer is these corporations: pic.twitter.com/6CAzAKg6xE
— Jason Garcia (@Jason_Garcia) November 6, 2024
So a new hurdle had been erected. But the politicians still weren’t happy. Because voters kept clearing it, passing amendments to do things like restore civil rights to former felons and require lawmakers to spend more money on environmental protection.
So lawmakers placed additional hurdles to prevent citizens from even getting these issues on the ballot in the first place. At one point, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law that threatened to arrest people who donated more than $3,000 to citizen-amendment drives. The law was blatantly unconstitutional and blocked by a conservative federal judge who actually believed in the U.S. Constitution.
Then this year, DeSantis did something never done by any other governor: He spent tens of millions of tax dollars attacking the amendments to legalize marijuana and protect reproductive rights. And it worked, as more than 40% of Floridians voted no to both.
In one sense, maybe you should be congratulated. Your money helped defeat your vote.
If any of this bothers you, you should stop electing the people who keep trying to throttle your democracy. I can respect people who have faithful objections to abortion. But it’s hard to respect politicians who rig the system.
And now, GOP leaders are not only poised to impose even further restrictions, they’ve floated a plan to make future amendments even tougher to pass, requiring a 66.7% majority.
I’m not sure whether that idea will pass. But I am sure that every time citizens give politicians the power to throttle their votes, the politicians seize it.
Scott Maxwell is an Orlando Sentinel columnist. Contact him at [email protected].
