A proposed Florida Constitutional Amendment that wouldn’t change anything & that’s the point
Bottom Line: It’s rare that so much effort is put into a process, that if successful, wouldn’t change anything. But that’s the case with a proposed constitutional amendment being advanced by the Florida Citizen Voters committee. The summary for the proposed amendment for the 2020 ballot is this...
This amendment provides that only United States Citizens who are at least eighteen years of age, a permanent resident of Florida, and registered to vote, as provided by law, shall be qualified to vote in a Florida election.
To be clear, I fully support this language, in fact the state of Florida does as well. That’s why if it were to make next year’s ballot and pass nothing would change. We’re already one of 17 states with the strongest voter ID laws in the country requiring photo ID and you certainly have to be an eligible citizen. Now, if we were in New York, California or Pennsylvania, I’d totally see the unfortunate need to make clear that non-citizens may not vote. For example, in California over 600,000 non-citizens have state issued drivers licenses. Through California’s automatic voter registration law, they can attest that they’re citizens eligible to vote when they obtain their licenses, even if they aren’t, and obtain the ability. In San Francisco,you don’t even have to do that... They’ve enabled non-citizens to vote in local elections. But back to Florida...
Issues with unfit supervisors of elections aside, we have the strongest voter laws in the country and passing this wouldn’t change a thing. That raises the question as to if we’re going too far to have proposed constitutional amendments that don’t have any effect if passed even if we agree with the premise? I suppose the case could be made that were this to pass it’d be explicit within our state constitution to protect against activist politicians in the future, but I do get a sense that the use of ballot initiatives for ulterior political motives could be on the verge of getting out of hand.