Why does Florida have a super majority vote for constitutional changes?

Amendments three and four, marijuana and abortion, failed, despite the majority of voters wanting both amendments to pass. They both didn’t get 60% yes.

Amendment three garnered 56% of voters and amendment four garnered 57% of voters. 

Due to both not passing, we will only see medical marijuana in the state of Florida. The current abortion law will stay in place, which restricts abortion to the first six weeks of pregnancy, with notable exceptions; rape, incest and life of the mother. 

Some voters believe the 60% mark is too high to make constitutional changes. For the threshold to change, it has to be put on the ballot for voters to decide and would need at least 60% of the vote.

“Getting 60% of the voters to agree on anything is really hard and when it’s something that’s highly contested. It makes it even harder,” Florida Atlantic University Political Science Professor Kevin Wagner said.

Wagner wasn’t surprised both amendments didn’t pass because of the 60% threshold.

“It always seemed to me that getting either of these amendments up to 60% was going to be a heavy lift, not impossible, but a heavy lift,” Wagner said.

But why 60% in Florida? Most states have a 50% threshold for amendments to pass.

“Florida has had a 60% threshold going back to about 2006 and before that, we were, like most other states, we just had 50% as long as the majority of people voted for it, then it would pass,” Aubrey Jewett, UCF Political Science Professor said.

The irony is, the vote to increase that threshold in 2006 passed with almost 58%.

“It has been that way ever since,” Jewett said.

The argument for the threshold is it protects the constitution. The argument against is if there is a clear majority of people in favor it, it should fail.

“Bottom line is, almost every other state only requires 50% but Florida requires 60%. And so that’s how you get a situation like we have seen in this election where something like the abortion rights amendment gets 57% of the vote, gets about 1.5 million more yes’s than no’s, and yet still doesn’t pass. And that is pretty confusing to a lot of Floridians. That’s for sure,” Jewett said.

A couple of lawmakers tried recently to increase the 60% to 67%. It didn’t work. Political scientists say if passed, it would make it virtually impossible for anything to pass.

In 2014, medical marijuana failed. It was on the ballot again in 2016 and passed with 71% of the vote.