July 9, 2023
The 2024 ballot could have three highly popular amendments on the ballot, should they all get there in the first place. These amendments are aimed at protecting the freedom of Floridians, expanding their rights and ensuring that no future legislature can touch them.
All of these amendments face significant hurdles, including needing 8% of the total voters from the last presidential election, or nearly 900,000 people, to sign petitions in support of the amendments, though that number is closer to 1.2 million due to signature verification efforts. The Florida legislature has also passed laws making it more expensive to propose amendments by changing the rules for paying non-volunteer staff.
However, all of these amendments are sorely needed to change Florida and make it, once more, a bastion of freedom for all. None would ever pass the Florida Legislature, but all are supported by the people, and this is the only chance the people have to ensure that their voices are heard on specific issues rather than their candidate preferences.
Reproductive Freedom
The most important amendment of the three is the reproductive freedom amendment, brought forth by a group called Floridians Protecting Freedom. This amendment would, in effect, overturn the abortion bans currently in place and set to take effect.
The ballot summary of the amendment reads, “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”
The amendment is relatively moderate so that it can appeal to the wide swath (75%, in fact) of Floridians from all parties (including 61% of Republicans) who do not support the current abortion bans and are in favor of reproductive freedom. It would likely allow abortion up to around 24 weeks, since that is acknowledged to be around the beginning of viability. That would be significantly past the current 15-week ban and the total six-week ban set to take effect 30 days after the 15 week ban is approved by the Florida Supreme Court.
The importance of this amendment cannot be understated. Reproductive freedom is under siege in Florida and across the nation as women cannot access essential healthcare services. Florida’s 15-week abortion ban is putting the lives of women at risk as doctors play lawyers and lawyers play doctors while women face severe health crises and the six-week ban will only be worse. These bans are also cruel towards rape, incest, human trafficking victims as they retraumatize them and provide very limited recourse.
“Although this is not a party initiative, we are here to give them support when they ask for it,” said Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried. “Women’s rights are essential and having access to healthcare is paramount to living in a free country and a free democracy.”
In the entire South, abortion rights have been attacked relentlessly and by passing this amendment, the voters of Florida would not only be safeguarding their own health and freedom but would also be opening the doors for millions of women across the South to access this essential healthcare.
“Unfortunately for us, it is going to take this amendment to change this, and it’s a lot of work,” said Ms. Fried.
Let us be clear: abortion is healthcare. The legislature and governor have meddled too much in the affairs of women and have stripped them of the right to make decisions about their own bodies. The time to undo this is now.
This amendment will also encourage citizen participation in their democracy, similar to how reproductive freedom amendments across the country caused a surge in voter turnout across all parties.
Ms. Fried said, “It brings people out to vote that otherwise may not have voted because this is such an important issue. This is one of those issues that transcends partisan politics.”
This amendment has not yet qualified for ballot access. To sign and mail in the petition, you can go to floridiansprotectingfreedom.com and help turn Florida in the right direction. This can only be done with the help of registered voters in Florida who want to make a difference.
Various candidates and political groups are currently knocking on doors and trying to get as many people as possible to sign this petition to ensure it goes on the ballot, where Floridians almost certainly will approve it. Join in this effort if you can to protect a basic human right.
Recreational marijuana
This amendment, sponsored by marijuana giant Trulieve, would make Florida one of a rapidly growing group of states to make recreational marijuana legal.
The official ballot summary for the amendment reads, in part, that it will enable “adults 21 years or older to possess, purchase, or use marijuana products and marijuana accessories for non-medical personal consumption by smoking, ingestion, or otherwise.”
The voters of Florida approved a medical marijuana amendment in 2018 by a smashing margin and this is the final logical step in that progression. Tobacco, a far more harmful product, has been legal for generations, yet marijuana has not been. This would rectify that situation.
This amendment is also highly business-friendly and would bring great economic success to the state.
With recreational marijuana, Florida would be opened up to a whole new market that would rack up billions of dollars in sales each year. Moreover, the state’s ability to tax this substance, much as it applies excise taxes to alcohol, would enable it to raise vast sums of money, ensuring that the state’s revenues would increase and it would be on even more financially sound footing. This money could be used to prepare for hurricanes, fund affordable housing or raise salaries for state employees. It could even fund substance abuse programs and help fund programs meant to fight the opioid epidemic.
In Arizona, a state with legal medical and recreational marijuana, the state makes approximately $255 million per year from the sale of legal marijuana, while Illinois, which also has legal medical and recreational marijuana, made roughly $445 million in the first year that legal marijuana was implemented.
It makes both common and fiscal sense for the voters of Florida to adopt this amendment.
It, too, is not a surety on the ballot. While Trulieve has hit the required number of signatures after a massively expensive campaign, it has hit a hurdle as Republican Attorney General Ashley Moody is fighting to get it off of the ballot.
The Florida Supreme Court will decide if the voice of the people is more valuable than the voice of out of touch Republican elites. Only they will decide if voters finally get to allow Florida to tip the U.S. into a majority-recreational marijuana nation.
Right to clean water
The last of these three people-powered amendments is wide-ranging and would be truly pioneering.
The Right to Clean Water amendment would, according to the official ballot summary, enact “a fundamental right to clear and healthy waters. The amendment may be used to sue State executive agencies for harm or threatened harm to Florida’s waters, which include aquatic ecosystems. This amendment…allows attorney’s and expert witness fees to prevailing plaintiffs, and provides equitable remedies including restoration of waters.”
Clearly, everyone should be able to access clean water. This forms a foundation of humanity and, since we are all mostly made of water, it would impact our health and wellness. By giving people this right, it would mean that they could hold the state accountable for not doing enough to safeguard it and for letting corporate interests such as Big Sugar and the fertilizer industry dictate policy in the state. Clean water is, both now and for future generations, a priority as this precious commodity becomes ever scarcer and no government should ever be able to deny this right.
Additionally, by creating a civil action enforcement mechanism, including with attorneys’ and expert witness fees to the prevailing plaintiffs, the state would be prevented from using various methods to restrict the people’s ability to enforce this. A theme of the Florida legislature in the past several years has been to restrict citizens’ abilities to seek redress for grievances rendered to them by limiting attorney’s fees and making it so that the prevailing plaintiff will usually be financially drained. The clever wording of the amendment ensures that it will always have teeth, no matter what legislators try to do.
This amendment has not yet qualified for ballot access. To sign and mail in the petition, you can go to floridarighttocleanwater.org and help turn Florida in the right direction. Again, this can only be done with the help of determined and dedicated registered voters in Florida.
The reproductive freedom amendment ballot petition. Charles Horowitz for Policy Reform Now
By Charles Horowitz
Policy Reform Now 
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