Hostile to constitution

EDITORIAL
Published: 2 May 2008
The Palm Beach Post
Republican legislators thought that they could limit citizen petitions by making it hard for any but the best-financed efforts to get constitutional amendments on the ballot. Doing so meant violating the Florida Constitution but that didn't stop them, until last week.

The 1st District Court of Appeal blocked one of the worst surviving "reforms," the revocation of signatures from petitions. The court reminded the Legislature that the right to petition the government is a basic right in Florida. The signature revocation law violates that right by violating the integrity of the ballot. It's hard enough to gather 600,000-plus signatures without backtracking to replace valid signatures, a burden, the court said, "not prescribed by the constitution."

So, what's the harm in letting someone change his mind? After all, signature collectors, often paid by how many they collect, may stop at nothing. The harm is that the best-financed campaign, using half-truths and lies, can cripple a poorly financed one by making petitioners retrace their steps.

The ruling came in response to a lawsuit from the organizers of Florida Hometown Democracy, the grass-roots effort to limit growth by requiring citizens to vote on every land-use change, no matter how trivial. A well-financed opposition campaign, featuring a letter signed by former Florida House Speaker John Thrasher, aimed to persuade voters to revoke their signatures. The letter told voters that they "probably did not mean to sign" the petition, which would "likely result in huge property-tax increases for the citizens of Florida."

The development industry and business groups opposed Hometown Democracy. But the letter said the amendment would give developers "the power to use Florida's public lands as they please, at your expense." The campaign worked well. About 13,000 signatures were revoked, and Hometown Democracy didn't make the 2008 ballot.

The revocation law emerged from the 2007 legislative session. That year, the Legislature tried unsuccessfully to make it harder to gather signatures with paid help. A year earlier, voters approved a Republican proposal to require 60''percent approval for constitutional amendments. The appeals court has offered a refreshing alternative to the GOP mind-set: In matters related to the constitution, the constitution matters.