The 60% rule

Layer 1, the record

Born below its own bar

In November 2006, Florida voters approved Amendment 3 (2006), raising the approval requirement for every constitutional amendment, whether proposed by the Legislature or by citizens, from a simple majority to 60 percent. The certified result was 2,600,969 yes to 1,900,359 no, or 57.78 percent. The rule passed with less support than the bar it created. It took effect as Article XI, Section 5(e). The older two-thirds requirement for amendments imposing new state taxes or fees was left unchanged.

It reached the ballot as a legislative referral, not a citizen initiative. HJR 1723 was introduced on March 17, 2005 by Rep. David H. Simmons. The House agreed 86 to 30 on April 26, 2005. The Senate agreed 37 to 3 on May 6, 2005. The three Senate votes against were Tony Hill, Les Miller, and Frederica Wilson.

The stated motivation was that the constitution had become too easy to amend, and the 2002 amendment restricting the confinement of pregnant pigs served as the proponents' poster child. Florida Chamber of Commerce executive Mark Wilson argued the case in a 2006 op-ed, describing such amendments as disrespectful of the democratic process. Florida TaxWatch published research advocating the 60 percent standard in October 2006.

Support at the time crossed party lines, which complicates any simple account of it. Then-Sen. Dave Aronberg, a Democrat, supported the threshold and has said so since. Rep. Bruce Antone voted against it and reaffirmed his opposition in 2024, saying the intent had been to keep amendments out of the constitution. Who funded the 2006 campaign for the measure is not established here, because the campaign finance filings have not been pulled.

Thirteen majorities, zero amendments

Since the rule took effect, 13 ballot measures have drawn between 50 and 60 percent support and failed. Every figure below was pulled from Florida Division of Elections certified results, one page per measure, and every one matched the research corpus exactly.

It cuts every direction

The threshold is not a partisan instrument, and the record says so plainly. Of the 13 measures a majority of Floridians supported and did not get, 8 were the Legislature's own referrals and 5 were citizen initiatives. The rule blocks the Legislature's proposals more often than it blocks the public's.

Some of those blocked majorities are ones this site's readers may be glad were blocked. Partisan school board elections drew a majority in 2024 and failed. Top-two open primaries drew a majority in 2020 and failed, a measure that officials in both major parties opposed. A solar measure drew a majority in 2016 and failed.

That is the honest shape of it. A supermajority rule is anti-majoritarian in every direction at once, and whether any given result feels like a loss depends entirely on the measure. The argument against the threshold does not rest on liking the measures it stopped.

Raising the bar again

Lawmakers including Sen. Joe Gruters and Rep. Rick Roth have proposed raising the requirement further, to a two-thirds threshold of 66.67 percent, per 2023 reporting. Whether any such joint resolution is live in the current session is not established here.

The Legislature passed HB 1205 on May 2, 2025, and the governor signed it immediately. The law shortens the window for submitting gathered petitions from 30 days to 10, raises fines, creates felonies for petition gatherers who retain voter information or alter completed petitions, exposes sponsors accused of substantial irregularities to racketeering charges, and restricts who may circulate petitions.

Challengers in the Northern District of Florida included Florida Decides Healthcare, which is pursuing a Medicaid expansion initiative, Smart and Safe Florida, which is pursuing a renewed marijuana initiative, the League of Women Voters of Florida, and LULAC. The Southern Poverty Law Center filed days after signing.

The litigation ran as follows. On June 4, 2025, Chief Judge Mark Walker mostly declined to block the law while suspending one key part. On July 8 and August 21, 2025, he granted partial preliminary injunctions, including blocking the residency requirement as applied to Smart and Safe Florida. On September 9, 2025, the 11th Circuit paused those injunctions pending appeal. Trial began February 9, 2026. On April 30, 2026, the district court ruled in Florida's favor.

In that ruling Walker described the citizen initiative process as now "virtually dead" except for causes able to raise tens of millions of dollars, while concluding that the plaintiffs' objections were policy arguments rather than constitutional violations. Secretary of State Cord Byrd has defended the law as necessary to address fraud in the petition process.

Whether the plaintiffs appealed that ruling is not established here, and this page is re-checked against the appellate docket before any update.

The 2020 attempt

In 2020, a measure sponsored by a nonprofit called Keep Our Constitution Clean would have required every constitutional amendment to pass in two separate statewide elections rather than one. The Florida Chamber of Commerce and the Florida Farm Bureau endorsed it. Contemporary reporting described the sponsor as secretive about its donors and noted that the Chamber's largest donors included Disney, Florida Power and Light, and Publix.

It failed at 47.53 percent. Of the twenty measures examined for this page, it is the only one that did not reach a simple majority, which is why it carries a different mark in the Ledger than the thirteen the threshold blocked.

The thread

Mark Wilson, president of the Florida Chamber of Commerce, appears at both ends of this arc. He argued publicly for the 60 percent threshold in 2006. Secure Florida's Future, one of the two nonprofits in the Hope Florida money chain documented elsewhere on this site, is chaired by him according to reporting cited in that investigation.

Those are two documented facts about the same person, presented as such. This page makes no claim about intent, coordination, or design connecting them.

Changing it back

The threshold is itself a provision of the Florida Constitution. Repealing it, or lowering it, would require a constitutional amendment. That amendment would need 60 percent approval, under the rule it was written to change.