On March 21, the Florida Senate Rules Subcommittee on Ethics and Elections passed SB 1504 by a vote of 7-5. The bill is sponsored by Senator David Simmons (R-Longwood). It bans petitioners from working in Florida if they don’t live in Florida. It also bans paying petitioners “directly or indirectly” on a per-signature basis. It requires petitioners to always carry ID while they are working. It bans anyone from circulating if that person has been convicted of certain crimes during the last five years.
The author must realize that parts of this bill may be invalidated by courts, because he included a severability clause. Florida, Georgia, and Alabama are the states in the Eleventh Circuit. None of those three states currently bans out-of-state circulators, so there are no court precedents in the 11th Circuit on that issue. Circuits that have invalidated residency requirements for circulators are the Second, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits. Certain lower courts in some states in the Third Circuit have also invalidated residency requirements for circulators. The Fourth and Eighth Circuits have upheld residency requirements for circulators. Thanks to BallotBoxNews for this news.