Comment

Comment by Cindy Graves on October 6, 2010 at 10:34pm

Florida’s PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS UPDATED
Recommendations: Florida Federation of Republican Women’s Legislative Committee

Amendment 1 – Campaign finance
Repeal of the public financing of statewide candidates who agree to spending limits.
Amendment 1 repeals Florida's system of public financing for statewide elections, created in the 1980s and put in the Constitution by the voters in 1998. Candidates for governor and the state Cabinet got $11.1 million in the last statewide cycle in 2006.
The original, reformist idea was to level the playing field against big money. But leaders of the Legislature call it "welfare for politicians." They have made it tougher to get the money in recent years, and now hope the voters will kill it altogether.

Recommendation –Vote YES to repeal public financing and ask your legislator to consider campaign finance reform in other areas in 2011.

Amendment 2 – Taxes

An additional homestead property tax exemption for members of the United States military or military reserves.

Amendment 2 gives an increased homestead tax exemption (meaning, they have to possess one already) to members of the military and reserves deployed outside the United States. The additional tax break would be based on the number of days of the year they were out of the country.

Recommendation – For

Amendment 4 – Property rights

Requires voter approval of all changes to local comprehensive land-use plans.

Amendment 4, so-called Hometown Democracy, would require voter referenda for local growth planning, wresting control from city and county officials. The intent is to stop what proponents feel is runaway development and destruction of open spaces. Opponents, which include local governments and developers, say the amendment is unworkable and would hamstring decision making.

Recommendation – Against



Two amendments – 5 and 6 deal with redistricting, due to take place in 2012 as a result of the 2010 census. The political implications are huge, particularly for incumbents. Most Democrats favor Amendments 5 & 6, which would redraw boundaries to create compact districts and reduce gerrymandering

Amendment 5 – Redistricting
Amends the current practice of drawing legislative district boundaries.
Amendments 5 and 6 also were put on the ballot by citizen petition. Their stated goal is "fair districts" for the Legislature and Congress, saying that districts should not be drawn by the Legislature to "favor or disfavor" one party or incumbent. Opponents say (among other things) that this is impossible to achieve and will automatically throw redistricting into the courts.
Recommendation – Against
Amendment 6 – Redistricting
Amends the current practice of drawing congressional district boundaries.
Amendments 5 and 6 also were put on the ballot by citizen petition. Their stated goal is "fair districts" for the Legislature and Congress, saying that districts should not be drawn by the Legislature to "favor or disfavor" one party or incumbent. Opponents say (among other things) that this is impossible to achieve and will automatically throw redistricting into the courts.
Recommendation – Against
Amendment 8 – Education

Changes the current “maximum” class sizes to school-wide “average” class sizes.
Amendment 8 would roll back public school class-size restrictions to 2002 levels. This is cost-driven. Local school districts, saddled with shrinking budgets, are hard-pressed to build new classrooms to accommodate smaller classes. The current education studies do not support the position that smaller class sizes lead to increased student performance.

Recommendation – For

Federal Budget Question – Budgets
Asks whether Congress should add an amendment to the U.S. Constitution requiring a balanced federal budget
Recommendation – For


Judges
First District Court of Appeals 2010
Judge Lori Rowe - retain
Judge Kent Weatherall - retain
Judge Paul Hawkes – retain
Judge Jim Wolf- retain
Judge Phillip Padovano - NO
Judge Nikki Clark - NO
CHARLES T. CANADY YES retain
Took office 2008
Merit retention vote 2010
RICKY POLSTON YES retain
Took office 2008
Merit retention vote 2010
JORGE LABARGA NO do not retain
Took office 2009
Merit retention vote 2010
JAMES E.C. PERRY NO do not retain
Took office 2009
Merit retention vote 2010

Comment by Jason Fischer on October 6, 2010 at 10:26pm

I don't think we have every thrown out a judge by ballot, but I certainly hope that LaBarga and Perry get the pink slip!

Comment by FCTP on October 6, 2010 at 6:00pm

http://www.jamesmadison.org/ I just did it and it worked fine.

Hummmmm Try again and do it from a fresh link and not through the document.

Comment by Tracy on October 6, 2010 at 5:59pm

Sorry Jamesmadison link....my mind is elsewhere obviously.:)

Comment by Tracy on October 6, 2010 at 5:57pm

Billie I tried to get the jamestown link to come up but it wouldn't come up is there another link I can use?

Comment by Tracy on October 6, 2010 at 5:54pm

Rosemarie may I quote this for my facebook page?

Comment by Rosemarie Brenneman on October 6, 2010 at 3:17pm

Home » Florida Review » Currently Reading:
Fair Districts Florida- An ACORN Front Group That’s Anything but “Fair”
October 4, 2010 Florida Review 7 Comments
Fair Districts Florida is the organization sponsoring Amendments 5 and 6, having obtained enough signatures to place these amendments on the November ballot; and it also identifies itself as a “non-partisan” organization. The stated goals of these two amendments are to establish “constitutionally mandated fairness standards” to determine the way Florida draws legislative and congressional district lines by drawing ‘compact’ and ‘contiguous’ districts that allegedly don’t advantage incumbents or political parties. Its rabid supporters want the public to believe that that if Amendments 5 and 6 were approved, legislative and congressional districts will somehow not be drawn to favor or disfavor any political party or incumbent.

But let’s be real, please. While the concept of “fair” districts may sound appealing to voters on the surface, all these claims begin to completely unravel under just the slightest bit of scrutiny. First off, Fair Districts Florida was started in 2007 with $25,000 of seed money from none other than ACORN- yes, that same ACORN criminal enterprise that was busted for tax fraud and prostitution last year. The organization also has a clear partisan bias, no matter what Ellen Freidin, its leader and activist progressive Democrat says. The “bipartisan” organization is made up of a bunch of progressive liberals and a couple of Republicans who have been named “honorary co-chairs”- read people who lent their names but not their time to actually research the merits of this cause.

The quest to make legislative districts more “fair” would have much more credibility if Fair Districts Florida sought to draw districts using county & city lines, waterways, or roadways as legislative boundaries, but they’re not. The fact is that Florida’s population mostly follows the coastline, and the lines for counties and cities were drawn long before substantial numbers of people began moving into them. And since our state’s geography is irregular, intra-state mobility is substantial, and Democrat voting blocks are tightly compacted, there is no way for “fairer” districts to be drawn as Fair Districts Florida promotes them.

Researchers recently ran several detailed analyses of Florida electoral results using numerous computer-drawn districts. The results are those which Fair Districts Florida would prefer you ignore.

From the Orlando Sentinel-

Earlier this month, researchers from Stanford University and the University of Michigan presented a yearlong study of where Florida voters live that ran thousands of complex simulations of elections in computer-drawn contiguous and compact districts.

Their models found that even using maps drawn by nonpolitical algorithms, Republicans would still win 59 percent of all the districts.

That’s basically because more Democratic voters live in concentrated clusters in urban cores, while Republican voters are spread out along the suburban and exurban landscape, they concluded.

“Their [Democrats'] larger problem is with the extreme concentration of support in cities, and the constitutional reforms will … not help them there,” said Jonathan Rodden, a political scientist at Stanford who presented the research with University of Michigan professor Jowei Chen at the American Political Science Association annual conference in Washington, D.C..

“In order to achieve a ‘fair’ translation of votes to seats, the Democrats would need to draw very non-compact wedge-shaped districts starting in downtown Miami and reaching out into the suburbs,” Rodden said.

It’s clear that Fair Districts Florida isn’t about “fairness”, it’s about liberals and progressives being more able to successfully enact their agenda in Tallahassee.

Conveniently, Fair Districts Florida has not shown any examples of exactly what a “fair” district looks like, otherwise their partisan motives would be on full display. Fair Districts Florida would simply create more of the same oddly shaped districts that simply benefit Democrats to the maximum extent possible, which brings us to the truth about “fair” districts- redistricting is all about politics and power, as it always has been since the beginning of the country. But this time, it will be the courts drawing “fair” districts instead of the legislature. Funny how no one complained for decades when Democrats drew the state’s districts, but now that they’re out of power in the state, “fairness” all of a sudden becomes a priority. Were either of these amendments to pass, or if Alex Sink were to win the Governorship, ACORN’s corrupted influence will have a substantial say in Florida’s redistricting. Vote No on both of these amendments, and tell Janet Reno that Mickey Mouse shouldn’t be registered to vote for Alan Grayson in Congressional District 8.

Comment by Jackie Dougherty on October 6, 2010 at 3:05pm

Thanks for all your hard work, Billie.
Jackie

Comment by Kurt D Wullenweber on October 6, 2010 at 2:56pm

Billie,

Thanks for putting together another great meeting and another invaluable resource.
You're the greatest!!

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