Sign on for the public

It is called, in part, the Voter Protection Act. A more fitting title would be the Democracy Endangerment Act.

As part of its continuing attempt to make Floridians as powerless as possible, the Legislature is moving on several fronts to restrict the public's ability to amend the state constitution. One of the most egregious bills faces a vote today in the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.

Senate Bill 1996, which has cleared one committee, could make it almost impossible for any constitutional amendment to reach the ballot by petition. Understand that the Legislature isn't opposed to changing the constitution -- as long as only the Legislature decides what those changes would be. For those who seek to petition the government, Florida's population and land size mean that any such drive must pay people to collect the half-million signatures of registered voters. SB 1996 would make it as hard as possible for such drives to succeed.

Among other things, the bill would require that petitioners pay all public costs of verifying the signatures before paying any signature gatherers; that could be a bureaucratic snarl. The bill would allow any registered voter to challenge any signature; that could allow stealth campaigns to harass petition drives. The bill would require that anyone signing a petition remember his or her voter registration number. The bill would require any signature to be submitted to the elections supervisor's office in 10 days.

The hurdles don't end there. Anyone signing a petition from a signature gatherer also would have to acknowledge that the form was correct. Under this bill, the form would have to carry three notices: that the signer has the right to take the form home, study it and then mail it in (thus increasing the cost); that the signer can know whether the gatherer is being paid and, if so, how much; that the "merits" of the proposed amendment "have not been officially reviewed by any court or agency of state government." And if the proposal still makes the ballot, the state could estimate the cost of the amendment not just on government but on the private sector.

Perhaps Sen. J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, who sponsored this bill, and his patrons want to head off the petition drive to establish an independent redistricting commission. Perhaps they want to block the amendment that would order a review of all sales-tax exemptions. Whatever the motivation, this is terrible legislation that would place increasingly out-of-touch legislators even further out of touch from the people who employ them.