Credit: Photo by Matt Keller Lehman

Everyone watching for the outcome of Florida’s ballot measures on Tuesday learned, if they weren’t already aware, an important history lesson: For over two decades, all proposed constitutional amendments that make it onto the statewide ballot in Florida nowadays must receive at least 60 percent of support from voters in order to pass, instead of just a simple majority. Ironically, that’s all because of a constitutional amendment approved by Florida voters in 2006 to raise the bar.

It’s ironic because that measure, backed by the Florida Chamber of Commerce and other businesses like Publix, passed with just 57 percent of the vote — meaning, it would not have gotten enough support to pass today. It was passed two years after Florida voters, to the chagrin of the business lobby, approved a statewide minimum wage in Florida, giving Floridians a wage floor that was $1 higher than the federal minimum wage.

On Tuesday, the state’s higher threshold for the passage of constitutional amendments made all the difference in the outcome of two citizen-led ballot measures in Florida concerning abortion rights and recreational marijuana legalization.

Statewide, Amendment 4 — a closely watched ballot measure that sought to guarantee the right to abortion in Florida up to roughly 24 weeks of pregnancy — received a 57 percent vote of support, with more than 6 million Floridians voting in favor of the measure. Still, even with this clear majority, the amendment did not surpass the 60 percent threshold, and therefore failed to pass. Under Florida law, most abortions are currently banned after six weeks of pregnancy. Doctors who violate the law risk felony charges, prison time, fines and the loss of their medical license.

“Despite relentless government sabotage, the state’s promotion of disinformation, and anti-democratic attacks, the majority of Floridians still voted for Amendment 4,” said Lauren Brenzel, director of the Yes on 4 campaign in a statement. “The people have spoken and have sent a clear mandate to the Legislature: repeal Florida’s extreme ban.”

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In a state where Republicans not only maintained, but grew their supermajority in the Florida Legislature this year, a repeal of Florida’s six-week abortion ban is unlikely to happen any time soon. The six-week ban was approved by state legislators last year, largely along with party lines, with just a few Republican dissenters.

What’s clear from unofficial election results, at the very least, is that this close defeat of the measure wasn’t the story in Orange County, or in other Democratic-leaning counties in Florida such as Broward, Hilllsborough and Pinellas counties, where voters showed overwhelming support of over 60 percent for Amendment 4 that — if it were just up to them — would have secured its passage.

In Orange County, home to the Orlando metro area, Amendment 4 received nearly 65 percent of the vote, according to unofficial election results from the Supervisor of Elections Office, which reported an overall voter turnout of about 73.2 percent countywide as of Wednesday morning.

Out of 612,803 votes cast in the county overall, 588,889 voted on Amendment 4, with a majority — 382,958 voters, or 64.8 percent — voting in favor of its passage. The ballot summary for Amendment 4 read in part that, “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.”

Viability, under Florida statutes, is the point during pregnancy after which a fetus could feasibly survive outside of the womb on its own, generally around 24 weeks of pregnancy. Less than 1 percent of abortions in the U.S. occur after 21 weeks, according to CDC data.

Orange County voters also supported legalizing recreational marijuana, with a 60.8 percent vote in favor of Amendment 3, and rejected Donald Trump in his nonetheless-successful campaign for a return to the White House. While Trump handily won the increasingly red state of Florida, he lost in Orange County, where 55 percent of voters threw their support behind Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, who is projected to have lost both the popular vote and the electoral college nationwide.

Out of roughly 849,000 registered voters in Orange County, nearly 40 percent are registered Democrats, 30 percent are registered as NPA (no party affiliation) and about 27 percent are registered Republicans, with the odd 3 percent identified as “Other.”

Samuel Vilchez Santiago, chair of the Orange County Democrats, told Orlando Weekly they were proud of the support shown for Amendment 4 in Orange. “Our state’s requirement of a 60 percent supermajority to pass constitutional amendments does not align with the will of the people. Most Floridians, including an overwhelming number of voters in Orange County, want to see a woman’s right to choose protected,” said Vilchez. “Yet, under this current threshold, even a strong majority of voters can be denied the policies they’ve asked for. We’ll be watching every Florida politician closely.”

In several closely watched state races in Central Florida, Democratic candidates tended to fare better in Orange, compared to neighboring counties such as Seminole (where a majority of voters still, nonetheless, supported Amendment 4 as well).

Florida’s Amendment 4 was one of 11 abortion-related measures on ballots across the country Tuesday, with seven out of 10 pro-abortion rights measures securing passage. In Nebraska, voters had two abortion-related measures on the ballot — one to protect abortion access up to viability, and another to restrict it to 12 weeks. The latter, pushed by anti-abortion activists, prevailed. Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, 14 states have now seen successful pro-abortion rights referendums approved by voters, according to Vox, either cementing or strengthening abortion access.

Florida, a state that’s grown increasingly red in recent years, isn’t one of them, but a call from abortion rights advocates in Florida to repeal the state’s six-week abortion ban doesn’t appear to be going anywhere either. “The result is disappointing, but it’s not the end of our fight for a more inclusive Florida that cares about the health and well-being of women and abortion-seekers,” said Florida Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, in a statement posted to social media.

Eskamani herself, a former Planned Parenthood employee and strong abortion-rights supporter, easily secured her fourth and final term in her own election for the Florida House District 45 seat Tuesday. The popular progressive is restricted from running again due to term limits.

“The infrastructure we built around Amendment 4 must be maintained so that we can continue this fight into the legislative session and beyond,” Eskamani declared.

This post has been updated to include a statement from Orange County Democrats chair Samuel Vilchez Santiago.

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This article appears in Nov 6-12, 2024.

General news reporter for Orlando Weekly, with a focus on state and local government and workers' rights. You can find her bylines in Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, In These Times, and Facing South.