Tallahassee, Florida (AP)-Florida-enclosures have long been able to use the process of citizens’ initiative to circumvent the republican-dominated legislature and to improve progressive policies, such as increasing the minimum wage, legalizing medical marijuana.
Republican governor Ron Ron Ron Signed a law on Friday, creating new obstacles to initiatives governed by citizens, the changes that critics claim to make him extremely expensive and effectively impossible for local authorities to put them in the newsletter.
Recently, legislative authorities in dozens of countries have advanced bills to cope with society’s ability to vote, according to the Center for Initiative Initiative Strategies. Voice rights advocates say the trend conveys the promise of direct democracy.
According to Florida, voters can be charged with a crime if they collect more than 25 signed petitions of voting other than their own or those of the immediate family members, and do not register in the country as a petitional circulator.
Months before the bill progresses in the legislature, Florida voters supported the initiatives to vote to protect abortion rights and legalize entertainment marijuana, although the measures do not reach 60%required to cross.
The landings signed the measure on Friday night, hours after the deputies gave the final approval of the bill. He married the state resources and the power of his service in an aggressive campaign to oppose the newsletter measures last November.
“This bill is deliberately designed to make it impossible for any state initiative to make it back on the newsletter,” said State Senator Carlos Smith, a Democrat from Orlando, who called the measure “the final murder against direct democracy.”
Republican sponsors of the bill claim that the measure aims to protect rather than restrict the process of citizens’ initiative, which the President of the Republican Senate of Florida repeatedly calls “Sacrosanct”. Instead, they say that the goal is to reform a process that they see as tainted by external motifs-gathers who claim to have seasoned petitions or misled voters.
“This bill is not an attack on the process of citizens’ initiative,” said the Senator of Cooperation of the State Don Gath, a Republican of Panhandle. “This is an attack on those who corrupt him.”
The State Election Crime Department, set up in the Administration of the Assatantis in 2022, helped to provide two dozen sentences related to the election, according to a January report. Civil servants have made at least 17 arrests of paid petition circulators working on behalf of four different voting initiatives, the agency said.
The measure “is not concerned with an imaginary, hypothetical fraud, but some fraud,” said Republican State Senator Jennifer Bradley.
One of the legislators of the reform said it was a necessary purpose to take advantage of the Administration of the Tanningis, which uses public funds to create ads opposed to measures in 2024 and threatened the television stations with criminal sanctions to broadcast advertisements in support of proposals.
“They are involved in behavior that will now be illegal and now be prevented,” said Garets, according to a provision that prohibits the use of public funds for political advertisements for any proposed amendment to the Constitution.
According to the law, more people will be banned from collecting petitions, including Floridians with convictions for crimes that have not been restored their voting rights. Ungrafes and people who do not reside in Florida will also be banned from collecting signatures in a country with a significant population of part -time workers and residents born abroad.
The Floridians will have to provide their driver’s license number, the voter ID or the last four digits of their social security number to fill in a petition. The form will eventually become a public record.
The campaigns will be facing a short time to return petitions to local elections employees, and fines, if they do not return them to the right county -the defenders of the problem claim that they can arise due to an error in the voters when completing the forms.
Former Senator of the Republican State Jeff Brans, a frequent critic of his former colleagues in Talahassi, who now runs the non -profit political project in Florida, criticized the bill in a publication on X.
“It must be difficult to change the constitution, but not impossible,” Brandes wrote. “Unless you are Florida’s legislation – then you just continue to move the target until only you can keep the result.”
___ The writer of Associated Press Mike Schneider in Orlando, Florida contributed to this report. Payne is a member of the Associated Press/Report body for America Statehouse News Initiative. The report on America is a non -profit national service program that raises journalists in local news halls to report insufficiently concealed issues.