Guest AuthorThe Florida Chamber of Commerce is one of the few entities publicly opposing Amendment 1 on the November ballot. Yet at the end of September, the Florida Chamber Political Institute’s polling data showed that Amendment 1 has very strong support: 75 percent in favor and 14 percent opposed.
Amendment 1, if approved by the voters on Nov. 4, will dedicate 33 percent of the revenue from excise tax on documents to the Land Acquisition Trust Fund for the next 20 years. Money in that fund is used to buy, improve, manage, and restore conservation land and easements.
Conservation land protects water quality and drinking water resources. Amendment 1 does not impose a new tax; it simply dedicates a portion of an existing tax to this conservation purpose.
Using this tax revenue to preserve land and water quality is not new. It has been done since 1968. In recent years, however, legislators have diverted this money for other purposes. Amendment 1’s approval would ensure that at least a third of this “doc stamp” revenue would be used as it traditionally has been used.
With such a high approval rate in the poll data, it is easy to assume that Amendment 1 will be approved. A closer look, however, makes that assumption not so easy — for a couple of reasons.
First, approval of Amendment 1 requires a supermajority of 60 percent. In 2006 voters approved another amendment that imposed the supermajority requirement for constitutional amendments. Before then, only a 51 percent majority was required for approval.
Second, Florida voter turnout in the past four non-presidential elections (2010, 2006, 2002, and 1998) has hovered around 50 percent. In the most recent primary election in August, only 17.5 percent of Florida’s registered voters turned out. That trend isn’t good.
Combined, the 60 percent threshold and the low turnout is a potential recipe for an unexpected outcome. Simply put, Amendment 1’s fate depends on who and how many show up to vote on Nov. 4.
Every vote counts. For example, in the last non-presidential election in Florida in 2010, Rick Scott received just 61,550 more votes than Democrat Alex Sink in the gubernatorial race. That’s only 8.8 votes per precinct! (Divide 61,550 by the 6,931 precincts that existed in 2010.)
Supporters of Amendment 1 should not be complacent. They should be working hard to turn out the vote.
According to ballotpedia.org, well over 200 organizations throughout Florida support Amendment 1. If those organizations and their members work hard on turning out the vote, Amendment 1 just might receive its supermajority approval.
Barbara Joy Cooley is a communications professional and science writer with over 30 years of experience. For more than a decade, she was an editor and then a public affairs specialist for an international research and technology organization. She lives in Sanibel, Fla. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
