- October 9, 2024
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Every four years, Florida voters face a flurry of proposed amendments to the state constitution. This year, six proposed amendments will be on the ballot.
The Legislature proposed four of the amendments; citizen initiatives were behind the abortion and marijuana amendments. Each amendment requires 60% or more approval to be adopted.
Often times, the proposed amendments are confusing and/or more complicated than what they appear. Voters beware.
For that reason, we have made a practice of trying to help voters understand some of the rationales, nuances and special interests behind the amendments.
In a similar vein, we have made a practice of recommending a yes or no vote. We take into consideration the context and the motivations for the amendments.
But to a great extent, we make our recommendations on the basis of a simple litmus test: Will it increase or decrease individual liberty? Will it protect your individual liberty or give more power to the government to restrict your liberty?
To require members of a district school board to be elected in a partisan election rather than a nonpartisan election and to specify that the amendment only applies to elections held on or after the November 2026 general election. However, partisan primary elections may occur before the 2026 general election for purposes of nominating political party candidates to that office for placement on the 2026 general election ballot.
It has been a long misnomer to say school board elections are non-partisan. And by placing this measure on the ballot, the Florida House and Senate — author’s of the amendment — are acknowleding the misnomer.
To be sure, people still will argue school board elections should be apolitical. But here in Sarasota and Manatee counties, for instance, over the past decade and longer, school board elections most certainly have been partisan, even though no one would come out and say it.
The partisanship is unavoidable.
In fact, it would be a service to voters to have partisan school board elections. Identifying political party affiliations immediately signals a person’s politico-economic philosophy about government and governance — which is a big portion of what voters want to know.
In contrast, when school board candidates hide their political affiliations, voters suffer. They have less knowledge and transparency on which to base their judgments.
Let’s quit the charade. Everyone should be open and up front about who they are and where they stand.
We recommend: Yes
To preserve forever fishing and hunting, including by the use of traditional methods, as a public right and preferred means of responsibly managing and controlling fish and wildlife. Specifies that the amendment does not limit the authority granted to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission under Section of Article IV of the State Constitution.
Oh my. Actually, it’s no surprise. This proposed amendment has aroused almost the same intensity of emotion as Amendment 4 on abortion.
The avid hunters and fishers versus the animal rights and environmental activists. Republicans versus Democrats. The International Order of T. Roosevelt versus the Biden administration. Or, how about this — the American Daughters of Conservation versus Pets Ad Litem. The former is one of 33 organizations listed in support of Amendment 2, while the latter is one of 64 organizations listed opposed to it.
The genesis of this amendment apparently took on urgency when the Biden administration began efforts in 2022 to ban lead ammunition on public lands. The T. Roosevelt Order said that was “the first step toward complete prohibition of lead ammunition and tackle on any public lands where you would hunt and fish.”
A next step came in 2023 when the Biden administration blocked federal funding under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act for schools with hunting and archery programs.
And three months ago, anti-hunting and animal activists in Oregon barely failed to get enough petitions to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would have criminalized the killing of all animals, including mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles for any reason other than self-defense, thus outlawing all legal hunting, fishing, trapping and raising animals for food.
All of this mobilized the International Order of T. Roosevelt and other national pro-hunting and fishing organizations to persuade more state legislatures to adopt constitutional amendments guaranteeing the right to hunt and fish.
Since 2000, voters in 21 states — mostly red states — have adopted such amendments. In this election cycle, Florida and Ohio would become 22 and 23.
In Florida, it’s a battle of accusations of animal doom and gloom from the supporters behind NoTo2.org. Here is one: “It’s designed to trick voters into allowing some of the cruelest forms of hunting and prevent citizens, scientists and agencies from protecting wildlife in the future.”
They’re claiming the words “traditional methods” would bring back gill nets, which voters outlawed in a previous amendment.
Supporters of Amendment 2 insist the measure means “that which is legal at the time of passage – it doesn’t undo decades of wildlife policy, or reverse the net ban, or any of the other fear-mongering type ideas that are mentioned – it really just protects that which is legal at the time of passage.”
Likewise, as the amendment states, it would not take away the authority of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Its job is to protect and manage more than 575 species of wildlife; more than 200 native species of freshwater fish; more than 500 native species of saltwater fish and, as it says, “balance these species’ needs with the needs” of Florida’s 23 million residents and the millions of visitors “who share the land and water with Florida’s wildlife.”
Even Rodney Barreto, chair of the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission — whose job is to protect fish and animals — supports the amendment. Barreto also is a board member of the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation.
If approved, the overarching results of this amendment would make it almost impossible for Oregon-like activists and sympathetic legislators to outlaw hunting and fishing in Florida. The Legislature can still write statutes governing hunting and fishing. But the amendment would enshrine those American traditions into Florida’s constitution. Repealing a constitutional amendment is always more difficult than amending a law.
Amendment 2 meets our litmus test. It would solidify Floridians’ liberty, not diminish it.
We recommend: Yes
Allows adults 21 years or older to possess, purchase, or use marijuana products and marijuana accessories for non-medical personal consumption by smoking, ingestion, or otherwise; allows Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers, and other state licensed entities, to acquire, cultivate, process, manufacture, sell and distribute such products and accessories. Applies to Florida law; does not change, or immunize violations of, federal law. Establishes possession limits for personal use. Allows consistent legislation. Defines terms. Provides effective date.
This may be the truest statement about legalizing recreational marijuana use: Almost nothing good results from it.
Yes, people who smoke weed or eat marijuana-laced gummies and cookies will have more freedom to use it; they will be happy. The people who grow and sell it will be happy. And governments will have more tax money to spend or to shift the tax burden from one group onto the potheads (less freedom).
But overall, here are a few questions to consider: What is the benefit of recreational marijuana for individuals and for society? How does it make life better for the vast majority of people?
Asked about her summer in Boulder, Colorado, where recreational marijuana is pervasive, a Longboat Key resident told us: You could smell it everywhere you walked downtown. She said it stinks. Another anecdote: When we witnessed three movers showing up at 8 a.m. on a Sunday at a Colorado family’s home recently, two of them were already stoned and wreaked of weed.
How fun. Can’t wait.
There is, of course, a good libertarian case for legalizing marijuana and drugs. Milton Friedman, the U.S. king of libertarian economic thinking, consistently advocated for legalizing all drugs. He made a convincing argument in a 1991 interview (watch: ukcia.org/research/argue/milton.htm).
“I have estimated statistically that the prohibition of drugs produces, on the average, 10,000 homicides a year,” Friedman said. “It’s a moral problem that the government is going around killing 10,000 people. It’s a moral problem that the government is making into criminals people who may be doing something you and I don’t approve of, but who are doing something that hurts nobody else.”
He also said there are many more innocent victims from the prohibition on drugs than the 10,000 homicides. “You’ve got the people whose purses are stolen, who are bashed over the head by people trying to get enough money for their next fix. You’ve got the people killed in the random drug wars. You’ve got the corruption of the legal establishment. You’ve got the innocent victims who are taxpayers who have to pay for more and more prisons, and more and more prisoners and more and more police.
“You’ve got the rest of us who don’t get decent law enforcement because all the law enforcement officials are busy trying to do the impossible,” Friedman said.
So far, 24 states and Washington, D.C., have legalized recreational marijuana; seven more have decriminalized it. Next month, voters in Florida and North and South Dakota will decide whether to legalize recreational marijuana.
With so many states already legalizing it, how has it worked out?
In 2021, the CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank, conducted its second widespread study of the effects in the states that legalized it. Its conclusions were the same in both studies: inconclusive.
“We found that the strong claims made by advocates and critics are substantially overstated and in some cases entirely without support; mainly, state legalizations have had minor effects.” Its assessment, CATO said, “remains tentative because of limitation in the data.”
Even so, in a 535-page report for the Florida secretary of state examining possible consequences of recreational marijuana use in Florida, among the volumes of data, statistics and estimates, here are few noteworthy citations:
“[W]e also know that the number of Americans who heavily use marijuana is soaring. According to a recent National Survey of Drug Use and Health, the number of Americans who heavily use marijuana (at least 300 times a year) has risen from 3 million in 2006 to 8 million in 2017, coming close to the alcohol abuse numbers.”
The sheriffs also cited statistics from Colorado and Washington, both of which legalized recreational marijuana in 2012, and from California, which legalized it in 2016:
The sheriffs concluded: “Based on the experience of other states, we know that law enforcement resources, as well as public health and other governmental services, will be taxed with new call volume due to the nature of marijuana impairment and its relationship to criminality (including victimization) as well as mental health.”
Here’s another cost: A whole new bureaucracy of regulators. The Florida Department of Health estimates it will need 100 full-time employees at a cost of about $9.25 million a year; startup equipment cost of $3.24 million; $2.5 million in litigation expenses; $720,000 for automobiles; and $360,000 for office rent. All of which will grow as the usage and sales grow.
This is not an issue that is as simple as lighting a joint. But as legislators often do, rather than address this matter as they should with thoughtful legislation, they take the politically safe route. They let impatient special interests force the issue with a voter-initiated constitutional amendment.
And that is what we have argued against on this page the past two weeks: The matter is now in the hands of the democratic, majority mob, so that the lowest common denominator will be making a decision that will have far-reaching consequences on Florida’s social and economic core. And they will be deciding this without lawmakers having conducted widespread, intelligent and educational discussions across the state with voters so they understand the possible consequences.
Had lawmakers done their job, they would be handling this issue the way it should be handled: Treating legalized recreational marijuana the same as alcohol and cigarettes. Legalize it that way.
As Friedman noted in 1991: “I would legalize drugs by subjecting them to exactly the same rules that alcohol and cigarettes are subjected to now.
“Alcohol and cigarettes cause more deaths than drugs do, by far, from use, but many fewer innocent victims,” he noted. “And the major innocent victims, in that case, are the people who are killed by drunk drivers. And we ought to enforce the law against drunk driving, just as we ought to enforce the law against driving under the influence of marijuana, or cocaine or anything else.”
If only legislators would do their job. But on this, it’s probably too late. Even though the potheads will enjoy more freedom, this is another issue that should not be engraved in the constitution.
We recommend: No
No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.
This amendment is as deceitful, diabolical and extreme as one could be on this subject.
“If this thing passes, then Florida will become a mecca for abortion,” said Matt Walsh Aug. 30. Walsh is the podcaster on the Daily Wire (and no relation to this Matt Walsh). “You’ll have abortion tourism. Abortion rates will skyrocket by like a 1,000% in the state with people coming in from out of state to get late-term abortions, to kill babies at 35 weeks. That’s what is going to happen.
“It is a pro-infanticide measure. Radically far left. Radically pro-abortion,” Walsh said.
Walsh is known in the podcast world as uncompromisingly pro-life. His assessment, nevertheless, is plausible — and likely.
But rather than engage first in the debate over a woman’s alleged “right” to determine the outcome of her pregnancy, let’s first focus on the egregious flaws in this amendment: its wording. Even moderate defenders of abortion should agree the authors who crafted this amendment deviantly worded it to sound moderate.
Start with the words “before viability …” (italics added)
What is viability? Who is the authority who decides what is viable — and what gives them the authority? What are the criteria to determine viability?
In standard legislation, lawmakers define every important term to avoid ambiguity. Even the marijuana amendment’s full text defines the terms.
The authors of this amendment obviously and deceptively avoided defining viability. And for good reason: Vagueness is akin to no fence around the cow pen.
But even worse than the vagueness is what comes after “before viability”: No law to prohibit abortion before viability “or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” (italics added)
This is an open invitation. Again: What defines “necessary”? What defines “patient’s health”? That could be anything — physical, mental, emotional, financial. Prior to this, most legislation was worded to “protect the life” of the mother, not just “health.”
What’s more, what and who is a healthcare provider? Your cousin, the dentist? Your psychic health tarot-card reader? More intentional vagueness and ambiguity.
Finally, and this is just so deceitful and despicable, there is the confusing vagueness of the final sentence in the amendment:
“This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”
Various interpretations of that sentence say the amendment would abolish current law that requires parental consent before an abortion is performed on a minor.
This amendment just says the Legislature could still pass a law requiring that parents be notified before their minor daughter undergoes the abortion — but it eliminates parental consent.
Surely, rational, responsible parents and grandparents of young girls see this proposed amendment as yet another step of taking away parental control and responsibilities and putting them in the hands of the State.
To be sure, this amendment is being sold to enshrine in Florida a woman’s right to choose what happens to the life of the child in her womb — with no restrictions at any time all the way up until birth. And while we repeatedly have stated our litmus test is whether a proposed amendment increases or decreases individual liberty — and certainly this would allow untethered freedom for any woman, this measure totally negates any moral considerations. It is extreme.
And yet, most Americans are not morally or immorally extreme.
Pew Research has found in multiple polls that while 61% of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances, 56% of those respondents “say the timing of an abortion (i.e., how far along the pregnancy is) should be a factor in determining its legality.”
But the sponsors of this amendment are counting on the low-information voters not to think and just reflexively approve this vaguely worded measure.
That is democratic, majority mob rule at its worst.
Given the emotional nature and importance of this issue — human life — this subject requires much more careful consideration than a deceptive, 50-word proposal.
But heretofore in the U.S., that has been almost totally absent. The focus is always on the two extremes, rarely an alternative or an acceptable in between. Indeed, in the Western World, the United States’ treatment of abortion has long been the most radical.
In her amazing 1987 book, “Abortion and Divorce in Western Law,” Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon authored an extensive comparison of how European countries address abortion. We don’t have the space to show the details of each country’s rational approach. But Glendon accurately summarizes:
“West European laws, while permitting abortion on a wide variety ground, communicate that fetal life is an important interest of the society and that abortion is not a substitute for birth control.”
And, she astutely concludes:
“Over time, I would say to my pro-life friend, compromise legislation may aid your cause, because it is what goes on in people’s hearts and minds that you really care about. The mores, not the law, are the best protection of the weak and dependent.
“A law which communicates that abortion is a serious moral issue and that the fetus is entitled to protection will have a more beneficial influence on behavior and opinions, even though it permits abortion under some — even many — circumstances, than a law which holds fetal life to be of little or no value and abortion to be a fundamental right …
“In a similar vein,” Glendon writes, “I would say to my pro-choice friend: Please consider what a set of legal arrangements that places individual liberty or mere life over innocent life says about, and may do to, the people and the society that produces them.
“In the long run, the way in which we name things and imagine them may be decisive for the way we feel and act with respect to them, and for the kind of people we ourselves become.”
These vague, deceptive 50 words should not be how this matter of life should be decided.
We recommend: No
To require an annual adjustment for inflation to the value of current or future homestead exemptions that apply solely to levies other than school district levies and for which every person who has legal or equitable title to real estate and maintains thereon the permanent residence of the owner, or another person legally or naturally dependent upon the owner is eligible. This amendment takes effect Jan. 1, 2025.
Every homesteaded homeowner’s initial response and reaction to this proposal is likely to be “yes.” Why? It would lower the taxable value of your home, condo or townhome and presumably lower your annual property tax bill.
More freedom and keeping more of your money.
Ah, but dig deeper.
First, here is how this amendment would work: If you or a dependent live full time and own a home in Florida, you qualify for two $25,000 homestead exemptions. That means your county property appraiser deducts $50,000 off the taxable value of your home — lowering the amount you owe on your local property tax.
If this amendment is approved, you would be able to adjust one of those $25,000 exemptions in line with the annual rate of inflation. Say inflation is 3%, that exemption would increase to $25,750 — thus lowering your local property tax even more.
But, however much property taxes are reduced, that means local governments most assuredly would look for other ways to make up that lost revenue. Don’t expect them to cut spending.
The most likely sources would be from commercial property owners, renters and second-homeowners, none of whom qualify for a homestead exemption. And when you increase property taxes on commercial property owners, you increase the cost of goods on consumers, not to mention the cost of rent on renters.
In addition, in terms of being a significant tax cut, this measure is a joke. The Florida Revenue Estimating Conference projects this amendment would result in statewide saving in its first year for Florida’s roughly seven million homesteaders a whopping $22.8 million. That’s roughly $3.25 per homeowner.
But most of all, homestead exemptions are bad tax policy. They are a subsidy. They benefit homeowners at the expense of all other property owners. What you give to one, you must take from another.
If lawmakers were honest and fair, they would eliminate homestead exemptions altogether so everyone is assessed the same — equal protection under the law.
We recommend: No
Proposing the repeal of the provision in the state Constitution which requires public financing for campaigns of candidates for elective statewide office who agree to campaign spending limits.
This amendment originally made it into the Florida Constitution most likely not because it was a good idea, but because it was bundled in 1998 in one amendment with six other election-related items. The entire amendment never should have made it to the ballot. It violated the one subject rule.
But finally, enough legislators came to their senses and voted to put a repeal of that amendment on the 2024 ballot.
No way should taxpayers subsidize any candidate for office. A subsidy is always bad. It’s taking tax dollars from you and giving an unearned benefit to another. Government has no business taking your money (a restriction and confiscation of liberty) and giving it to would-be politicians.
Seriously, if you’re a Democrat, do you want to help a Republican get elected? And vice versa if you’re a Republican.
Repeal!
We recommend: Yes
