Volunteers with the League of Women Voters of Florida are often seen at farmers markets, book clubs, parades, and other gathering places, collecting petitions and raising awareness on new campaigns. The League in recent years has become a flag bearer for the citizens initiative process that allows ordinary Floridians to bypass lawmakers and amend the state constitution.
League volunteers were instrumental in the success of the ballot measures that raised the minimum wage in 2020 and restored the right to vote for those convicted of a felony in 2018. Last year, they helped the effort to collect the roughly one million signatures that placed measures to legalize abortion rights and marijuana on Florida’s ballot.
But a new law, signed by Governor Ron DeSantis on Friday, will turn common tactics the League uses to gather signatures into a criminal offense.
The legislation makes it a felony for a volunteer to collect more than 25 signatures for a campaign from people outside their family without getting approval from the state, which requires background checks and training. At a single community event, individual volunteers collect far more signatures than that cap, according to the League’s co-president Cecile Scoon, and groups will have to overhaul training and outreach tactics. The League will teach volunteers to comply with the law, but the looming threats “will chill people from wanting to participate as signature gatherers or even as signatories,” Scoon warned.
“It is turning those places where citizens were free to discuss and share information into potential liabilities for the organization that supports them,” she told Bolts. “People are not going to want to get involved. They don’t want to be at risk of any criminal penalties.”