On April 28, the Florida House passed HJR 129, which requires statewide initiatives to get 66.67% of the vote in order to pass. If the Senate also passes it, the voters would vote on the idea in November 2024. All Republicans voted “yes” and all Democrats voted “no.”
All statewide initiatives in Florida are constitutional amendments. There is no Florida procedure for an initiative to merely amend or create a statute. Current law requires them to get 60% in order to pass.
MINORITY RULE GERRYMANDER OLIGARCHS AT WORK.
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P-A-T
Again I’m not sure what you want or why you keep wearing out my name? To me it just naturally makes sense that it should take at least 2/3 to change the constitution.
Pat it is more about the republicans keeping power than trying to be fare in making policies and laws that are good for everyone instead of just the far right.
It doesn’t take a simple majority to amend the US Constitution either. Besides which. Division of labor is a good thing. We hire legislators to legislate. Let them do the job we hire them to do.
FOR NON-MORONS —
P-A-T = SHORTHAND FOR —
PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION
APPROVAL VOTING
TOTAL SEPARATION OF POWERS
Florida already has one of the most difficult ballot initiative processes in the country out of the states which have the process. No need to make it more difficult.
They out to create an initiative statute process, and also.a referendum process and a recall process.
NO 66.67 PCT REQUIREMENT FOR EACH GERRYMANDER OLIGARCH [GOG] TO GET ELECTED IN EACH RIGGED GERRYMANDER DISTRICT.
NO 66.67 PCT REQUIREMENT OF THE GERRYMANDER OLIGARCHS [GOGS] IN EACH HOUSE OF THE FL GERRYMANDER LEGISLATURE TO ENACT LAWS.
TYRANT GERRYMANDER OLIGARCHS [GOGS) VS THE PEOPLE — IN ALL 50 STATES
AZ NEEDS TO CHILL. ALWAYS SO ANGRY
I’m just a person, not a shorthand. Division of labor is one of humanity’s greatest inventions. Sure, you can try to grow all your own food and make and repair everything you use, build and repair your family shelter, try to take care of any sicknesses that you or your household get, use animals you raised and trained yourself for transportation or walk, etc. But living only with what you can make or maintain yourself would not be the lifestyle we’re used to. A large percentage of the population would die in early childhood, and few would even make it to what we now consider middle age. Starvation would be the number one cause of death.
As a species we do better when we specialize. When people do what they do best and trade their goods and services, create a medium of exchange, etc, society as a whole benefits. For example, if we allow some people to be plumbers as a profession, plumbing gets done better than when you make everyone do their own plumbing, and everything else gets done better too because people are not distracted by having to fix toilets.
Legislation is kind of like toilets that way. Legislators are the plumbers of legislation. We hire them to do a job, and we should let them do it. When we make everyone else do it, we end up with a time consuming, stinky, mess.
That’s not to say legislators always do a good job. Just as with plumbers, auto mechanics, electricians, doctors, or anyone else, some are better than others. We have elections for a reason. But I’d still rather choose a politician than have to be one in my spare time, just like I’d rather choose a plumber than fix a toilet. And I’d really prefer to have my neighbors call plumbers when they need them than smell what happens if they all try to fix their own toilets all the time.
It’s 3/4 of states to change US Constitution. This is not unreasonable.
A Constitution should be difficult to change. I agree with the others.
Florida is doing a fantastic job keeping law and order and growing their economy.
This law is being passed to prevent issues being put on your ballots to vote on and pass by majority rules like legalizing pot? Just a for instance here…If greater than 50% of the people vote to legalize pot in a state at voting time than it should be passed. But that is not the way it works here in Florida . It must be 66% to legalize pot. .now the majority should actually rule in passing a law into effect. To keep everyone honest the majority of the population that votes something in by ballot should be made the law and win. Period. There are many things going on nationwide and especially in Florida that the majority of voters do not agree with and when put on a ballot to be voted on well the majority of votes should rule on the issues. This prevents our congress and senate governors etc..from becoming dictators to the people. We live in America not Russia, China, North Korea the middle east Mexico ..We live in America and placed on a ballot to vote on the majority of votes should rule ..law should be passed changed..as the people should make that decision not one senator or congressman or governor or president…the people majority should decide . That is why America is free the land of freedom democracy…no dictators for America.
The analogy to the U.S. Constitution is not a good one. There is no national initiative to change the U.S. Constitution. If there were, it would be absurd to require it to receive two-thirds of the popular vote. Take abortion as an example. If there were a national initiative held on abortion before 2023, by the pro-life forces, if we had a two-thirds popular vote requirement, the pro-life forces would have needed two-thirds of the voters on their side to win. Yet after the Dobbs decision, then the pro-choice forces would have needed two-thirds of the voters on their side to win.
Abortion was wrongly decided to begin with. The Dobbs decision is correct.
We are a Constitutional Republic, not a Democracy.
Richard and Roxanne don’t understand this.
I disagree with Richard. The analogy to the US CONSTITUTION is a good one. There’s no national initiative for a reason – the founders wisely distrusted mob rule, which is what direct democracy is, and preferred a representative republic. I believe there should be no state initiatives either, among other reasons for ones I explained above.
In the unfortunate states where a direct popular vote can change the constitution or the laws, the supermajority standard to change the constitution is still a good analogy ,because it at least puts a brake on the unbridled popular passions which separation of powers in a limited government republic is precisely in place to cool and temper.
The Dobbs decision doesn’t go far enough. The Comstock Act needs to be broadly interpreted and vigorously enforced nationwide.
Abortion and marijuana are good examples of why initiatives are a bad idea on the state and NATIONAL levels. These dangerous unleashings of mob rule lead to such evils being legalized, whether locally or nationally. This leads in turn to the destruction of our minds and bodies, which is part of the evil globalist agenda along with cultural bolshevism, population replacement, secularism, and eventually depopulation.
I agree with and stand in solidarity with my fellow Pats.
The feminist/gender bender agenda is also a big part of the cultural bolsheviks assault on Christian and European civilization. We need to return to traditional patriarchal families, traditional roles for men and women, and Christian prayer and segregation in public schools. Public facilities should be segregated both by race and by biological sex. Woke, politically correct, and cultural bolshevik social changes need to be rolled back to at least the 1950s, or better yet the 1850s.
Direct democracy has at times been compared to two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner, but these analogical sheep are rather predatory themselves. A better analogy is cannibalistic crabs in a cooking pot (CCCP).
Roxanne is precisely wrong. A limited republic based on the founding FATHERS wise distrust of direct democracy as mob rule is what made America great to begin with, and now we’ve fallen so far that we need to make America great again. The Marxist Fabian evildoers have destroyed the minds of successive generations of American children with their miseducation, and it’s only getting worse.
Direct democracy has been tried a few times in world history – a few places and times in ancient Greece, French revolutionary and hippie communes, etc – and has always been a social and economic disaster each and every time. None of those experiments are worth emulating or repeating. However, they are worth learning about and learning from. As examples of what not to do.
Switzerland has the national initiative, and Switzerland is one of the best countries in the world by every objective standard. If every country were like Switzerland, the terrible social ills that are present in so many countries would not exist.
Switzerland is going downhill, but there are some elements of the Swiss system worth emulating. National initiative is not one of those. Things Switzerland does, or in some cases used to do, right:
Armed neutrality
Universal firearms training and ownership
Tougher immigration and naturalization laws compared to other European neighbors
Secret banking (unfortunately, not so much anymore)
Much government power devolved to cantons
Not joining European Union, EEA or Eurozone
Resisted the abomination of women voting longer than any other European nation except Liechtenstein; some cantons resisted as late as 1990
Resisted full UN membership until 2002
Resisted Schengen treaty until 2005
Relatively low taxes
Relatively heavy use of nuclear power
Before initiatives are voted on, they have to get on the ballot in the first place. According to Ballotpedia,
“To place a constitutional amendment on the ballot, proponents must collect signatures equal to 8% of the total number of votes cast in the last presidential election.”
That equals about 900,000 signatures now. That sounds super high, but I could be wrong. You have almost two years to collect them, I think.
This website tells you which initiatives are trying to get on now in FL, as well as historical initiatives that made the ballot and whether they passed, and even ones that failed to make it: https://dos.elections.myflorida.com/initiatives/
Adam Cerini has somewhat of a point. The counter is that the signature gathering is not a sign of popular support as it was originally intended (which was itself a very dubious notion, as explained above). Nowadays it has devolved into a financial arms race between special interests to hire armies of frequently transient or out of state street hustlers to gather voter signatures in public places using deceptive pitches.
Following the success of one of these efforts, there is a further special interest money race of deceptive advertising and public relations campaigns, again with many of them funded in large part from out of state, to sway the fickle public opinion. This predictably sad state of affairs illustrates why direct democracy is a bad idea, much like requiring everyone to be amateur plumbers in their spare time.
The Dobbs decision, imperfect as it is, is actually an illustration of why all the convolutions of representative republican government are a good idea. It took decades of work by the Pro Life movement to get things even to the Dobbs stage. We would be further along if not for widespread Demonrat cheating in elections.
Now, we need to hold the line on fickle popular passions combined with vote rigging being used by the antilife depopulation fans, cultural bolsheviks, Satanists in search of mass ritual child sacrifice to the devil, race traitors, and evil feminazis using the initiative process to roll back the pro-life gains.
It will be better, of course, when President Trump is back in his rightful office and can nominate more judges and justices, replace the derp state bureaucracy, issue executive orders, and use the integrated public alert and warning system constantly to counter the false left wing narratives constantly being pushed down our throats by all the thoroughly compromised and infiltrated organs of shaping public opinion.
SWISSLAND – WW II
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MADE WEAPONS FOR NAZIS IN EXCHANGE FOR GOLD LOOTED FRON JEWS KILLED BY NAZIS
DENIED CLAIMS OF DEAD JEW RELATIVES HAVING DEPOSITS IN SWISS BANKS AFTER WW II
— NO SPECIFIC NAZI RECORDS OF NAZI MURDERS OF SPECIFIC JEWS
TOOK UNTIL 1980S TO GET EVEN A FRACTION OF DEPOSITS TO RELATIVES
IE FAILURE OF W. ALLIES TO INVADE SWISSLAND IN 1944-1945.
Much like the left wing Nazis, the left wing allies would have been turned away by the well armed and trained Swiss. Both of the factions in the unfortunate brothers war correctly did the calculation that stashing their money in Swiss banks was better than having their men shot in Swiss mountains and valleys.
Switzerland took the exact correct position in regards to both of the first world wars, and with God’s help will also stay out of the third one that is now in its incipient stages in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Finland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldovia, Slovakia, former Yugoslavia nations, etc.
The Pats are on solid ground here.
Switzerland ain’t what it used to be.
Patton is right, like the Pats. Some other places where the incipient third world war is taking place:
Taiwan
Korea
China-India border
Pakistan-India border
Mexico-US border
Turkey
Syria
Cyprus
Iraq
Iran
Caucasus region
Central Asia
Uyghur areas
Lebanon
Israel/Palestine
Egypt
Sudan
Libya
Ethiopia
Eritrea
Yemen
Somalia
Chad
And we can keep going
Most states don’t even allow voters to directly amend the state constitution at all, so 2/3 is too easy if anything. Good analogies above about plumbers and crabs in cooking pot.
MOST WORLD REGIMES ARE DE FACTO EVIL AND VICIOUS MONARCHIES/OLIGARCHIES —
OFTEN WITH FAKE *DEMOCRATIC* [SMALL D] LEGISLATIVE BODIES — FULL OF ROBOT PUPPET STOOGES.
USA – MINORITY RULE GERRYMANDERS —–
IN BOTH HOUSES OF THE USA CONGRESS
IN EC FOR PICKING PREZ/VP
IN ALL 5O STATE LEGIS
IN MANY LOCAL LEGIS BODIES – CITY COUNCILS/ ETC
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P-A-T IN ALL REGIMES
Dude, keep my name out of your nasty mouth, I can’t stand Demonrats or small demon rats or their mob rule regimes.
I am not part of any regime.
We love mob rules democracy here in the cooking pot. Turn it up to 11!
The devolution of power to cantons may be the best aspect of the Swiss model, which the national referendum works against. I found the first two paragraphs of the case against the European Union here to be interesting real world validation of my thesis that political power should be devolved to the precinct level.
https://reason.com/2023/04/30/proposition-the-e-u-was-a-mistake/
I hope the readers will pardon the cosmotarian source, as I am a paleoconservative, but nevertheless it’s possible to find gold even in a big pile of rubbish.
As an aside, having now finished the article, my anti-EU stance is not the least bit changed.