After a wave of successful efforts led by citizens to expand the rights of abortion through voting measures, some state legislatures are making it difficult for public members to put such measures to voters.
Florida, which at the end of last week became the last state to promulgate stricter rules around the process, already facing a demand on whether to impose more restrictions on the voting initiative process is constitutional. The demand was filed by a group, Florida decides medical care, which is trying to obtain a proposal on next year’s electoral ballot to expand Medicaid in the state.
The group, which faces a February deadline to collect almost 900000 signatures of the residents that support the plan, said the new law was putting the firm and nervous.
The law submits a possible criminal penalty in circulating requests is not registered in the State; It limits to 25 the number of signatures that a registered flaitor can collect no; It requires the canvases to collect more identification information and shorten the time frame for the presentation of the petition 10 days after the signatures are resorted.
“It is not about transparency or responsibility, this is about control,” said Holly Bullard, the co -president of the organization he demanded. The process led by Citizens, he added, “is not perfect, but it is powerful. And that is exactly because they try to undermine it.”
Governor Ron Desantis, in a publication on social networks, said that the bill, which signed on Friday, “would combat the fraud of the petition and avoid the abuse of special interest of our constitutional amendment process.” A report compiled by the Crime Office Elections and Security of the State accused that some of the organizers and petitioners behind the abortion voting question had committed a “generalized petition fraud.” But the State did not challenge any firm at the beginning of the year, when it had the opportunity to do so.
Less than half of the nations 50 states allow citizens to collect signatures and place proposals on the ballot. State legislatures can also put questions on the electoral ballot, and generally authorize most constitutional amendments.
But after the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022 allowed states to restrict access to abortion, abortion rights groups occur in the initiative process as a way of avoiding conservative legislatures and putting the question of access to abortion directly to voters.
The new restrictions in Florida are similar to several that were approved last month in Arkansas, where almost successful petitioners to obtain an amendment of abortion rights on the ballot last year. The State led by the Republicans had recently required that a certain minimum signatures were obtained in at least 50 of its 75 counties, more than double the previous threshold.
Among the new requirements in Arkansas are that the organizers request the identification of photos of the possible signatories, and that the tensioners must be permanent residents of the State. Both already face legal challenges.
Other states that have tried to adjust the rules include North Dakota, where a resolution that approved last month increases the threshold of the support of voters to 60 percent for a voting initiative to approve, and South Dakota, where voters in the next Gental.
However, in Dakota del Sur, Governor Larry Rhoden, a Republican, vetoed a bill that would have imposed more difficult geographical requirements for the collection of signatures.
In Florida, proposing constitutional amendments that expand the rights of abortion and the legalization of recreational marijuana measures failed last autumn, even thought that more than half of the voters supported them. The State requires that 60 percent of voters approve such measures to become law.
The proposals for abortion rights directed by Citizens were successful in more than half of the boxes of boxes, including more conservative states such as Ohio and Kansas. Some states raised the threshold for the collection of signatures and the aggregate requirements on where at least some firms should be collected to guarantee a fair geographical representation. At least one, Nevada, requires that most voters approve an amendment to propose in two consecutive elections to become law.
The citizen initiative process has been used repeatedly in Florida to approve initiatives despite the strong opposition of state conservative leadership. Voters in 2016 approved a proposal to create a medical marijuana program and another to restore voting rights to up to 1.5 million people with sentences for serious crimes. (After the approval of the measure of voting rights in 2018, the legislature reduced it abruptly).
“These are not completely new, but the magnitude of the attacks has definitely grown up,” said Alice Clapman, a main lawyer in the Brennan Center for Voting Rights and Elections, about legislative efforts to harden around the amendment.
She questioned why it was necessary to add more rules in Florida, where the 60 percent threshold for the step has continued to be a barrier for many initiatives.
Mitch Smith Contributed reports.
