http://www6.miami.edu/pld/shannonmora_article.pdf
South Florida activists, groups lobby state for
constitutional changes
By Mark Hollis
Tallahassee Bureau
July 5, 2005
TALLAHASSEE · Shannon Mora, a Miami mother, thinks government officials would pay
more attention to children's needs if parents could cast votes on behalf of their kids.
"There's just not enough attention on what kids need, like better schools," says the mother of
three. "For education to really improve, parents' votes should count more. ... A politician doesn't
have to pander to me. But they might if I had a vote for every child in my household."
South Floridians such as Mora are collecting signatures this summer to change the state
constitution.
Mora's plan allows legal guardians to vote for children.
Other ideas include the improbable, such as a plan to define every political campaign
contribution as a "bribery" punishable by a year in prison, better-funded and much-publicized
changes that would revamp Florida's sales-tax structure, ban gay marriages in the event that a
current ban doesn't hold up in court, and strip legislators of their authority to draw
congressional and legislative districts.
J. Michael Sahm of Fort Lauderdale is behind an effort to make grocers label foods that are
"genetically engineered."
Steven Rosenberg, a West Palm Beach dermatologist, is trying to force state legislators to take
the FCAT test -- and repeat it until they get a 10th-grade score.
Rosenberg's daughter, Miranda, 18, thinks it's time that Florida lower its voting age to 16.
Altogether, almost 50 petition-gathering campaigns are registered and officially "active." "It's hard to get young people involved with the political process if they can't vote. But they can get petitions signed," Rosenberg said. The amendments in which he's involved have piqued interest among teachers as "a learning experience" in South Florida schools "about the political process," he said.
Many of the proposals are not the sort of moderate-sounding messages that politicians like to wrap themselves
around.
One group proposes to legalize marijuana, and another seeks an end to alimony obligations for divorcees.
Yet another is pushing for a lower drinking age.
Still, the advocates of these initiatives don't consider their ideas frivolous or funny. Miranda Rosenberg started her
proposal for lowering the voting age to 16 when she was 15, attending Suncoast High School in Riviera Beach.
She's 18 now, and this fall, her father said, she'll be a freshman at Harvard University, having drawn national
publicity for her grass-roots campaign.
Robert Sell of Sebastian in Indian River County started a petition drive to end alimony in Florida after his divorce. He
thinks alimony violates the U.S. Constitution and encourages some spouses to break up marriages only for their own
financial gain.
"A lot of women will walk away with the home, the family car, half the retirement and bank funds; and the guy ends
up paying alimony to boot," Sell said. "So, alimony is just an incentive for women to file for divorce."
Floridians have enjoyed the right to add their own amendments to the state constitution for almost four decades.
They've used it in the past 15 years to impose term limits on elected officials, demand lower public school class sizes
and free pre-kindergarten classes, ban smoking in most workplaces and push for the construction of a high-speed rail
system, an idea that voters later repealed at Gov. Jeb Bush's urging.
"There's just a preponderance of these amendments being offered because people feel their elected representatives
aren't representing them," said Damien Filer, a ballot initiative expert in Tallahassee. "The people who go to
Tallahassee are supposed to be working for us. But as we all know, far too often, they end up doing things just
because they owe a lobbyist or owe a political interest, but not what the majority of the people of the state want."
Supporters of the system call the citizen initiatives a form of "direct democracy."
Critics, including many legislators, say it's a concept that has gotten out of control.
For two years in a row, legislators have attempted to restrict the people's power to amend the constitution. This
spring, the Republican-run Legislature debated several ways to make it harder to pass a constitutional amendment,
settling on only one: a proposal, which voters will have to approve, that would require citizen initiatives to be
approved by 60 percent of voters rather than a simple majority.
Ben Wilcox, director of Common Cause of Florida, a government watchdog group, said he thought legislators would
prefer an outright end to the citizen initiative process .
Wilcox said that if legislators want to make it harder for citizens to amend the constitution, they should also make it
harder for legislators to do so as well and they should give citizens the power to change state statutes if legislators
think the constitution is getting too cluttered.
Filer said it is wrong to presume that initiatives are easy to get on the ballot.
"It's so hard as it is," he said. "People get an idea in their head and they think they can just stand at the supermarket
parking lot on a couple Saturdays and get all the signatures they need. It just isn't that simple."
Some initiative authors are shocked that their ideas don't generate widespread attention. One of them is William
Cushman of Pensacola. He owns a small technical research firm that tests acoustic equipment and develops hearing
devices. A few years ago, he became frustrated with public officials and grew convinced that large corporations and
other special interests have taken over the government.
Cushman came up with the idea of putting a new definition of bribery into law through a constitutional amendment
that would ban any campaign contributions to a candidate for elected office. He posted his idea on the Internet and
got a few sympathizers, including Janet Carey of Lake Worth, who has since become the chairwoman of his "Florida
Break the Link" campaign.
But Cushman and Carey haven't been able to collect many signatures yet, and they frustrated by the challenge.
"Unfortunately," Cushman said, "it seems to be very difficult to get people to actually get out and work on this
project. I'm not about to go begging for money and trying to hire professionals to collect signatures. If our citizens are
not willing to be good citizens and respond, then they can just suffer the consequences."
Mark Hollis can be reached at mhollis@sun-sentinel.com or 850-224-6214.
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