Come on the ballot -initiative reforms in Florida House

Tallahassee, Fla. (WCTV/Gray Florida Capital Bureau) – Florida could change the way the citizens receive suggestions for the ballot.

On Thursday, a House Committee advanced a draft law that places more demands on groups that want to change the state constitution.

This was one of the original topics that governor Ron Desantis wanted that the legislator appeared in the first special meeting in January. He and the Republican legislator claim that there is too much fraud in the process to change the constitution. However, the voters' lawyers are concerned that this will not help the process.

“The initiative petition process is broken,” said Rep. Jenna Personal-Mulicka (R) Fort Myers. “We have to use protective measures to protect the state of Florida from the known fraud that we know.”

These protective measures include a bond of 1 million US dollars that sponsors have to publish before collecting signatures, whereby paid petition collectors must be legal inhabitants of Florida, who have to carry out a background check and the timeline collectors with the timeline assemblers to hand over to the superiors of the elections.

“The bond is an instrument to protect the citizens of the state of Florida and ensure that those who sponsored petitions can pay the fine if they can violate the law,” said Rep. Pefors-Mulicka.

However, the lawyers spent the fact that the lawyers spent about two hours on Thursday to tell the legislators that this proposal was not the answer.

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Many, like the executive director of Equal Ground, Genesis Robinson, said that legislators should leave the initiative petition process alone.

“If you talk about the basic management movement, it is quite difficult for organizations or even citizens to collect the necessary petitions, but also to withdraw one million dollars before you can even start this process,” said Robinson.

This option is necessary for him if the legislator does not listen to the concerns of the citizens.

“If you have problems with which you do not agree if you have problems that you refuse to take measures in legislation, it is the choice of making people the right to make these changes through the election initiative,” said Robinson.

On the other hand, Florida Voice said for the unborn founder Andrew Shirvell, he doesn't think this suggestion goes far enough.

“It only seems like it is window dressing. There are not really essential reforms when they withdraw the onion, ”said Shirvell.

There will still be a lot of work that has to be done before this proposal has the chance to achieve the governor Desantis. This was just the first stop. There are other committees before it made to vote on the house floor. There is also a similar but different proposal in the Senate.

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