History
Florida’s best-known initiative and referendum backer of the
Progressive Era was retired U.S. Senator Wilkinson Call. The closest the
Florida legislature came to approving statewide I&R was the state senate’s
passage, in 1912, of a version so restrictive that it would have made it
virtually impossible to put an initiative on the ballot. The senate quickly
rescinded even this weak bill.
In the late 1960s, following the transformation of Florida from a
southern state to a sunbelt state populated largely by transplanted
northerners, the legislature passed an amendment authorizing initiative
constitutional amendments only - not initiatives or referendums on
statutes. The new provision was successfully employed for the first time in
1976, when Governor Reuben Askew sponsored an initiative requiring
public disclosure of campaign contributions. After this measure passed,
infuriated state legislators passed bills banning the collection of signatures
at polling places and imposing a 10-cent-per-signature “verification fee”
to further discourage future initiative proponents.
In 1992 Floridians passed term limits for the state legislature and in 2000
environmentalist won a major victory with the passage of an initiative that
established a statewide high-speed monorail system. However, since the
adoption of the statewide initiative process, only 16 initiatives have made
it on statewide ballots. This is due primarily to the high rate of initiatives
that are invalidated because they violate the state’s outrageously
stringent single subject provision for initiatives. It has become almost
impossible to get the proper clearance from the state supreme court
necessary to place an initiative on the ballot.
Excerpted from the Initiative & Referendum Almanac by M. Dane Waters.