Amendment to make it harder to change the Florida Constitution gets $1.5-million boost

Trying to collect enough petition signatures to get on the November 2020 ballot, a political committee seeking to make it harder to amend the Florida Constitution of received more than $1.5 million in contributions last month, a new finance report shows.

The Keep Our Constitution Clean political committee received $1,557,465 in what it described as in-kind contributions, bringing to more than $5.4 million the total of such contributions it has received since July.

Voters would have to approve constitutional amendments twice – instead of once – for them to take effect.

All of the contributions have come from a non-profit organization Keep Our Constitution Clean, Inc., which lists an address at the Fort Lauderdale law firm Haber Blank, LLP. Almost all of the in-kind contributions have been described in finance reports as being for “petition gathering.”

The committee’s ballot proposal would make it harder to pass future constitutional amendments. Under it, voters would have to approve constitutional amendments twice – instead of once – for them to take effect. The committee needs to submit 766,200 valid signatures by a February deadline to be able to go before voters in 2020. As of Tuesday morning, the state Division of Elections had tallied 343,863 signatures for the proposal.

The committee also needs Florida Supreme Court approval of the proposed ballot wording.

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This article appears in Project Censored.