Back in 2006 business interests in Florida successfully amended the state constitution to require a 60% vote to pass future amendments. Ironically, the amendment wouldn't have won if it had already been in place, since it received less than 60% of the vote. Nevertheless, it passed and it's the law.
But now even that isn't good enough. An abortion rights amendment has qualified for the ballot, so anti-abortion activists are trying to pass an amendment that would require future amendments to get 67% of the vote. At the same time, attorney general Ashley Moody is trying to get the state supreme court to kill the proposed abortion-rights amendment on the grounds that it's misleading because it doesn't explicitly define words like viability, health and health care provider. If conservatives succeed in both these efforts, it will become all but impossible to make abortion legal in Florida even if a large majority of voters supports it.
Probably both efforts will fail and voters will be allowed to decide if they want to make abortion legal. But can they get 60%? Various statewide polls have put support for abortion rights at 56%, 62%, 57%, and 68%, so it's a close call. And even if the amendment passes, then supporters will have to fight the best efforts of the legislature to undermine it, and those efforts will be all but fanatical.
Abortion might become legal in Florida soon. But it's not going to come easily.
It will, however, get democrats to the polls in huge numbers. Dobbs is the gift that keeps on giving.
Indeed, here ideologues on right side are providing an excellent countervailing force in favour of the Democrats to offset and even entirely swamp the undercutting forces of the Left side identarian activist speech (aka "woke" in common discourse) that is otherwise widely off-putting.
Democrats should be delighted - hopefully the blind ideologues on the anti-abortion Right will broadly push and cause enough reaction in combination with Trump negativity to off-put the centre.
Ok, I think I get what you are saying. But here's my question: why would voting for Trump (or Republicans generally, if you prefer) do anything about "identarian activist speech (aka "woke" in common discourse)"? Is that type of speech promoted by the president or another politician? If it's basically a social phenomenon -- as I think it is -- why would a vote either way do anything about it? Conservatives have basically been in charge since 1980, arguably, and we seem more "woke" than ever. So I'm curious why anyone thinks voting in any direction would change that.
This to me is often the missing link in politics. We hear that "wokeness", or whatever, is objectionable, especially to Trump supporters, but the connective tissue to what Trump (or other Republicans) is going to do about it goes unmentioned.
Or are you saying that giving women the right to have an abortion if they want is considered "woke"?
Unfortunately, low-to-medium information voters tend not to see much distinction between party activists and party officials unless the latter take major pains to distance themselves. Even though the woke crowd hasn't achieved much buy-in among Democratic Party elected officials, the elected officials still get blamed for the antics of the activists.
Some voters vote rationally based on real policy preferences, some do not. Some see voting Republican as a way to stick it to obnoxious left-wingers, as a way to punish them, and do it even if their policy preferences aren't conservative.
"So I'm curious why anyone thinks voting in any direction would change that."
You are assuming thinking goes into this. The Republican propaganda works by provoking an emotional response, not thinking, and some (many) voters vote with their emotions rather than thoughts.
Trump goes further than Republicans, completely eliminating the concepts of truth and sense.
Those are good answers I think.
Those of us who pay close attention to politics and care about it a lot should realize, I think, that for the vast majority of people, presidential politics is a chance once every four years to say "I'm happy" or "I'm pissed" and have that opinion recorded and count. Which makes me wonder that partisanship is usually described as so fixed.
I was reading some conservative commentary bemoaning how poorly Dobbs has worked out for them politically. Like they really didn't see the backlash coming or the opportunity it would create on the choice side.
Voters are proving to now be wise to shenanigans around language, so good luck to them on that. If somebody should mobilize Taylor Swift's army of young women and young men who court them....
You forget that DeSantis appointed virtually the entire Florida supreme court, and did so only after the court held he lacked the power to appoint Renatha Francis because she had not yet been a member of the bar for the constitutionally prescribed minimum period, only to have him reappoint her when she reached the constitutionally prescribed minimum bar membership. All of them, including Charles Cannady, whose wife is active in the anti-abortion movement, are anti-abortion judges appointed for that reason, and they have the unreviewable power to exclude the proposed amendment from the ballot for any or no reason as long as they find it ambiguous. Moody is arguing that viability is ambiguous absent a formal definition in the proposed amendment even though it was central to Roe for fifty years, and there's every reason to think four of the seven will agree and keep it off the ballot lest progressives turn out in droves to vote in November.
Shorter version -- don't trust the Florida supreme court, which has already thrown precedent in the trash on issue after issue, to behave governed by any principle other than what is good for republicans, for that is the only principle that explains their rulings to date.
“Ironically, the amendment wouldn't have won if it had already been in place, since it received less than 60% of the vote. Nevertheless, it passed and it's the law.”
A well-written constitution would forbid this, and require a law settting a supermajority threshold meet it, or better yet, exceed it by twice the difference between the proposed threshold and 50%.
Put all sorts of fertility rights on the ballot and watch as democrats and moderates stream into the polling stations. Make it about Republicans attempting to outlaw all abortions.
So much like Prop 13 in California, which passed with 62 % of the vote, but required all future tax increases to be approved by 66% of the voters.
Yes - Proposition 13 was my first thought.
I was just a wee lad in elementary school then, but I remember asking my parents about this curious wrinkle. How could a law which only needed to be passed by half the electorate requrie a 2/3 majority to enact exceptions to it?
"Don't ask me to explain the human race," replied my father.
If the majority of Florida voters care about women's health & abortion rights, maybe they should try voting for Democrats in every state election.
Bingo. The Republicans I know tell me, "well, I'm a Republican and vote Republican". Just can't get through those think heads. It's a lost cause.
And so do most Party activists on the Left as well.... so hardly an insight, rather self-regarding myopia.
But party activists and identifiers are hardly the changeable vote audiences, using them as an excuse to remain in self-regarding self-pleasing discourse is the path to losing. The Republicans in the USA rather did a more clever job of finding angles to appeal to certain segments of the formerly heavily D voting demographics to step by step slice off, rather than engaging in "oh they'll never agree with my morally superior views so pox on them."
"And so do most Party activists on the Left as well.... so hardly an insight, rather self-regarding myopia."
Yes, D's and R's are famously equivalent in terms of their hostility to universities, journalism, science, and other independent sources of reliable facts and evidence. Both parties. Yup.
Yup. Don't ever pay attention to Florida. It will only break you heart, over and over again. See, for example, "Giving former convicts the vote will change everything!'
Same for TX.
"think heads"? I know, you meant the opposite.
If the overall package is unattractive to them, this does not happen. Rarely are broad electorates single cause voters in reality.
As the Left in the USA has become more and more dominated by Uni-campus academic style, it has lost the reflex and capacity to understand non-activist non-Uni educated audience appeals (while heatedly denying and pivoting to Uni educated based ideas of identity, priviledging their views, preferences...)
In the real world, Dems have won 6 of the last 7 presidential popular votes.
But in the world of internet comment boards.....wokey, wokey, unicampus academics, blah, blah, uni privilege, blah, blah, etc is all very true and an incredibly perceptive take on the situation.
loons pretentious blathering isn't even worth a response.
What does the popular vote have to do with anything?
So... the goal is for the Gerrymandered GOP legislature to be the only place where laws are written and policy established?
Of course it is. And that's the trend in other red states, where, for example, the legislature takes away existing powers from the governor.
They can hold power for decades until, eventually, a huge electoral counter-wave sweeps them from power, after which democratic norms are established by law and the party shrinks into insignificance. But in the meantime great damage is done.
The Florida situation is remarkable in that it strives to prevent the will of 2/3rd of the people (66.66%) from being enacted. What's next, a 3/4th threshold? 9/10th?
Meant to write "laws are established" (not "written") because of the ability to override vetoes.
I think it was David Frum (or similar Never Trumper) who observed that when presented with the fact that their positions -- such as on abortion -- don't have majority support in a democratic system, Republicans won't adjust their positions to make themselves more popular, they'll just ditch democracy.
Yes, it was Frum. And he was 100% spot on. They will subvert democracy and throw themselves wantonly into the arms of dictatorship if it means forcing the populace to march to their Christian nationalist drumbeat.
It drives me nuts that Republicans value the rights and lives of non-citizens over those of real Americans. Because you know, fetuses aren't citizens.
Well, that's what Republicans say. But you and I both know what they really mean.
That Dems have no respect for human life?
They are wrong it that. Dems have much greater respect for human life, however, they also believe that the woman carrying the embryo has final say on whether it continues gestation inside her or not. It as deeply held a belief in freedom as gun ownership is for those on the right.
As a Floridian I can tell you that most of the proposed amendments that make onto our ballot are pretty right wing in nature. Things like caps on medical malpractice awards and limits on property tax increases for rich people. So I was pretty happy to vote in favor of the 60% threshold when it was on the ballot.
If 50% or more of the people in this state favor abortion rights then they should start electing more Democrats to state offices. I really wish they would.
How gerrymandered is Florida, though? Even if there's huge turnout on the Dem side, is it really going to make that much of a difference? It might in a gubernatorial election, but that only goes so far if one party has a lock on the legislature no matter what.