Ballot Amendments
The Local Puppy Trainer has a brief article on them today covering the explanation by the Supervisor of Elections, Paul Lux, GUIDE: Get the lowdown on the 6 proposed state amendments.
Not a lot of detail, but my state senator managed to get a Republican talking point slipped into the article about Amendments 5 & 6. The Republicans already lost their bid to negate these amendments when the court threw out Amendment 4 7 [my mistake] as a con job.
These are the amendments on redistricting, and the Republicans don’t want to give up their power to control everything by creatively constructing the districts to guarantee them a majority of legislative seats at the state and Federal level.
Fair Districts Florida is the group behind the amendments which are very simple and straight forward – districts should be compact and not drawn for political purposes.
On their web site they have examples of the current districts to show you what the problem is. If you look at the voter registration statistics you will see that the state is 42% Democrats, 36% Republicans, 19% independents, and 3% minor parties. Compare that with the reality that 65% of the state legislature and Congressional delegation is Republican. The 22% who aren’t members of the two major parties have no representation at all.
Elections shouldn’t be decided in party primaries, but that’s the way the system currently works.
This is an important change. This is a way to attempt to bring accountability back to the state government.
2 comments
From the article
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Groups such as Common Cause Florida, the League of Women Voters and the Florida Education Association oppose the amendment. They say public funding of campaigns encourages competition and allows candidates with limited funds to battle for elected office.
“It reduces the effect of money on a campaign,” Lux said of the opponents’ arguments.
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They oppose the amendment??
There are 6 different amendments on the ballot. I focused on 5 and 6.
That is a discussion of Amendment 1, which would repeal public financing of elections. I was a long hard road to get public financing, and now the legislature wants to eliminate it.
The legislature also wants to change the class size provisions that were put in by an earlier citizens initiative, and they put in Amendment 8 to do that.
I’ll be covering all the Amendments with a post later today, hopefully.