On April 23, a Florida State Court of Appeals struck down a law passed in 2007 that lets voters who had signed an initiative revoke their signatures. The 2007 law also said that revocation forms shall be furnished to voters at each county elections office, and that someone who revoked his or her signature could not thereafter sign that same initiative again.
The case is Florida Hometown Democracy v Browning, 1D07-6024. The plaintiff is struggling to qualify its statewide initiative, and is fighting other legal battles over the sufficiency of its petition. One can imagine the frustration that any petitioning group feels, as it tries to complete a petition, knowing that its opponents are carrying on a public relations campaign to persuade people who have already signed, to revoke their signatures. The proponents can never know for sure how many of their signatures have been revoked, and thus can never know whether they have enough valid signatures.
Signature revocation has also been used against minor party petitions, notably in New York and other states in 1940 against various state Communist Party petitions.
The Florida court said that the Florida Constitution protects the initiative process, and makes no provision for revocation of signatures. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.
ALL 50 State legislatures have EVIL and vicious gerrymander regimes — that will pass ANY law possible to stop reforms.
Half the votes in half the gerrymander districts = about 25 percent minority rule.
Primary math is much, much worse — about 10 percent of all voters nominate the gerrymander monsters of the controlling party who win in general elections — i.e. EVIL and vicious special interest gangs indirectly control ALL State legislatures.
Do your local State’s math and raise Hell about such math.
i.e. There is NO *Democracy* in ANY State legislature in the U.S.A. currently — ALL are oligarchies with EVIL powermad party hack leaders — speakers and majority *leaders* — making their EVIL deals with monarch veto Governors.