Monday, February 3, 2020 was Mexican Constitution Day. Mexican Constitution Day is a national holiday there. A real celebration of the liberties all Mexicans share. A day off even.

Mexico’s pride in their Constitution is in sharp contrast to the value the United States puts on our Constitution and very different from Florida. The Florida Constitution is a much misunderstood document where protections are available if the price is right.

Weeks ago, I agreed to write an insightful piece to help our community understand the difference between amending the Florida Constitution and the legislative process, the difference between protections of a right and a law. Little did I know at the time, that the Legislature was fast-tracking the death of direct democracy by attacking the Citizen’s Constitutional Initiative Process.

The basic difference between protection of the law and protection of a right in the Constitution is three fold:
who affirms (votes on) it;
the process by which it is created;
and the weight with which it can be enforced in court.

It is important to start at the beginning together. First, we live under a Federal Constitutional Republic. The Federal part refers to the president, Congress and the federal courts sharing powers reserved to the national government, governed according to its Constitution. We elect people to the United States Congress and the Florida State Legislature whom we entrust to make and delete laws in our “best” interest. We elect judges to serve in the courts which act as a balance against the making of laws inconsistent with the Constitution. We elect executives (i.e. president, governor, sheriff) to enforce the laws. The election process happens every two years allowing qualified voters to affirm (re-elect) someone doing a good job or elect someone else. In theory this is an amazing system with checks and balances.

In practice the role of money in politics has become the great decider.

Mark Twain first said, “Politicians, like diapers, should be changed often.” In modern politics, it is very hard to change a dirty politician. The majority of Floridians don’t vote. Eliminate the humans who can’t vote (children, seasonal residents, felons) and then add those who can vote but don’t and you will see some politicians will be elected by less than an eighth of the people they represent. Not good numbers.

Then, there is the role of money in the process. A big state like Florida will cost in the millions to run state-wide races or support a proposal on the state-wide ballot. Lobbyists donate to clients through political committees. They donate from one political committee to another political committee bypassing donation limits and obscuring donor trails.

Those elected politicians rule. They rule everything. In Congress, they control trillions of dollars, regulate everything from scientific research to paper napkins, can send us to war and make treaties. We divide Congress into a House and a Senate Chamber.

We elect people to Congress, to the state legislature, to county offices and to the courts.

The Florida Capitol in Tallahassee is home to the Florida State Legislature. Our Florida Legislature controls the 17th largest economy in the World. The legislature, like Congress, is divided into a House and a Senate. The House and Senate members are assigned to committees where they introduce bills that they hope will become laws. Through the committee process those bills are discussed and amended. Ultimately, only a fraction of the bills introduced become law.

Even the very best ideas may take years to make it through the process. The chambers are hierarchical, with a President of the Senate and a Speaker of the House who wield much power. One political party or another has majority representation. When the Governor and his executive cabinet share party affiliations, as a majority with the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House, they make a formidable force acting in concert toward a goal. This lockstep is an effort to be successful and to achieve their shared ideas of good governance. The minority party takes it upon themselves to challenge the majority’s ideas, often making for better pieces of legislation being passed.

Thousands of bills are introduced in Florida each year during the legislative season. Only a fraction of them will become law. Once a bill becomes law it can be amended by a future legislature. While alcohol has been legal for over 100 years, each year new alcohol bills are introduced, discussed, some die without being heard and some become law.

Representatives and Senators can change laws every year. They don’t ask the public what we think (maybe the occasional opinion poll), we don’t get a vote on the laws they make, we can not directly amend a law, but we can make public comment during committee hearings and meet one-on-one with lawmakers during the process to educate them about the unintended consequences of bad bills or to support good bills. We get one vote on the lawmakers, either re-elected them or choose someone else to make those decisions in our “best interest.”

The only way for Floridians to amend the law is a direct vote by the electorate. Florida is on its fifth Constitution. The current Constitution was ratified in 1968. There are three ways for a proposed Amendment to be put on the ballot. The State Legislature can propose an amendment, move it through committee and have it added to the ballot. Every twenty years the Constitutional Revision Committee is appointed to review and suggest amendments to the Constitution (they did that for the 2018 ballot) and citizens can collect enough signatures to put an amendment on the ballot.

The influence of money in politics may be felt during the Constitutional Amendment process more than in any other area of politics in Florida. While laws can be changed every year, and there are 160 members of the House and Senate who can champion a law, the Amendment process requires those pesky voters to weigh in.

The Citizens Initiative process was much easier in 1968. The Florida Legislature has been making it harder to change the Constitution at every opportunity. The process for collecting the required signature to make the ballot is complex. A formula worthy of a rocket scientist for percentages of signatures from seven of the twenty-nine Congressional districts governs the first hurdle, making the Supreme Court review.

Once the first hurdle is met, in essence collecting 10% of the total needed for being put on the ballot, several things happen. The Financial Estimating Conference looks at the financial impact of the proposal, the Attorney General weighs in on the Proposed Constitutional Amendment, and the Supreme Court schedules a hearing. If the Supreme Court approves your language, you are free to collect hundreds of thousands of petitions from registered voters before you spend millions to educate the voters before Election Day. No simple task.

In 1969, a Citizens Initiative had eight years to collect signatures for the ballot. Today, we have two years. A proposed bill in the Florida legislature HB 7037 and SB 1820 would reduce the time a signature was valid to under two years.

That same initiative in 1969 needed 50% of the vote plus one, a simple majority to pass, today an amendment needs 60% of the vote to pass.

The difference between protection in law and protection in the Constitution is epic. Keeping the path for citizens to amend the Constitution has become a major priority in light of the need to put the Right of Adults to Cannabis on the ballot. Once enshrined in the Constitution, it would take a second vote, another 60% of the voters to agree and millions more to change the language or abridge that right. Once the right of adults to cannabis is in the Constitution, Courts would be forced to recognize our equality in contracts, in job protections, in child custody, and in property disputes (like when the government seizes your Cannabis) to name a few.