DeSantis Approves Overhaul of Petition Process, Ballot Amendments

TALLAHASSEE—On the final scheduled day of the regular session, a bill revamping the ballot amendment process was signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The measure, HB 1205, was greenlit by the Florida House late Thursday evening and sent to the upper chamber Friday afternoon in the tail end of the measure’s arduous journey. DeSantis signed it into law at 7:57 p.m.

A controversial DeSantis priority, the petition process overhaul endured a total of 15 failed amendments and nine updates throughout the 60-day session.

"The right of citizens to petition, the most basic grassroots right in a free society, has been corrupted," said bill sponsor Sen. Don Gaetz, a Republican, on Wednesday. "Not by citizens, but by out-of-state contractors and their paid petition circulators and millions and millions of dollars."

DeSantis demanded a petition process revamp in the months following the November elections, in which two proposed constitutional amendments expanding marijuana and abortion access nearly passed. Both sponsors of the ballot initiatives, called Amendments 3 and 4, have since been branded with heavy fines for alleged identity theft, petition fraud, and election violations.

Democrats said the DeSantis priority bill should die because they believe it will remove the power of the people to petition for constitutional amendments.

"This bill doesn't raise the bar...it puts the bar out of reach and then tells Floridians to jump anyways," said Democrat Sen. Shevrin Jones on Thursday

The debate on the petition bill came a day after the boiling relations between the two chambers spilled out from behind closed doors and into the public view. The House and Senate, which have not been able to agree on a budget for the upcoming fiscal year, engaged in a nasty back-and-forth Wednesday because the lower chamber took a substance abuse center named after a 27-year-sober Senator out of a mental health bill.

HB 1205 passed the Senate Floor Friday in a 28-9 vote, a day after the House bowed to the upper chamber's version to revamp their own bill—with one slight change: volunteers can collect up to 25 petitions aside from their own and their family's without having to register with the state. The Senate wanted to limit this at 5 additional petitions.

What Were the Differences?

The House version, sponsored by Republican Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka, imposed a $1 million bond for petition sponsors once they collected at least 25% of the total signatures needed to get a measure on the ballot.  

It also removed the state’s chief economist from voting on a ballot amendment’s financial impact, required all petition circulators to undergo a criminal background check, and allowed the Legislature to create definitions for terms petition sponsors left undefined.

The Senate had none of those provisions. 

Unlike the House, the Senate version requires the estimated financial impact of the amendment to be on the petition, changing the current law that places the statement on the ballot.

Both force petition sponsors to turn in petitions within 10 days—down from 30—and insist that the state’s election police automatically conduct an investigation if a certain percentage of petitions are deemed invalid by the county supervisor: the House puts this at 10% while the Senate designates it at 25%.

The final version adopted all of the Senate's provisions, adding the limit on 25 non-family petitions collected by volunteers.