John Morgan, the personal injury lawyer heading up Florida's medical marijuana ballot initiative only had about 135,000 of the 683,149 required voter signatures in early December (2013). The latest I checked, according to the State of Florida the ballot initiative had 747,748 signatures. That meets the minimum threshold in 14 congressional districts to get on the ballot. Here's the breakdown by County. Please note the number of signatures in Lake County that has a demographic that skews white, old and GOP.
That left one more hurdle which happened today. The Florida Supremes just put Medical Marijuana on November 2014 ballot. The Florida Supreme Court was a tad testy during the hearing for the approval process last December and the approval wasn't a sure thing. In short, the language in the summary must be accurate and deal with a single issue. Here is the summary of the ballot initiative:
Allows the medical use of marijuana for individuals with debilitating diseases as determined by a licensed Florida physician. Allows caregivers to assist patients’ medical use of marijuana. The Department of Health shall register and regulate centers that produce and distribute marijuana for medical purposes and shall issue identification cards to patients and caregivers. Applies only to Florida law. Does not authorize violations of federal law or any non-medical use, possession or production of marijuana.
The full 2 page pdf is also available.
Predictably Florida's AG, Pam Bondi, Governor, Rick Scott and just about every other top Florida Republican was and is scared of this ballot initiative bringing out the "wrong" kind of people to vote in this November's election.
The coverage, however, is surprisingly less hostile than you would think for a purple state. Even the conservative regions are attempting to give some semblance of evenness. There are dog whistles in the coverage, but it's not as blatant as it could be. Pointing out John Morgan, the "very wealthy" "personal injury" "lawyer" "bank rolled" getting the signatures to the tune of spending "$4 million" on the project is as bad as it gets.
The GOP is not altogether against medical marijuana. The issue is about perceptions. Medical marijuana is far more popular than all out legalization. You'd think marijuana in general and medical marijuana in particular is a made to order state's rights issue the GOP can promote, but after years of the drug war and hard on crime initiatives; it's impossible for those who signed up for these initiatives to sign up for ending prohibition.
The Florida medical marijuana ballot initiative is a wild card that complicates the voter turnout message. How do you promote being against medical marijuana and still get the 40+% of your base that disagrees with you? It's easier for the Democratic side to sell medical marijuana, just point out medical marijuana dove tails with the rest of the Democratic message: disparate consequences, prohibition wastes money that could be spent on SNAP or whatever, compassionate health care treatment, tax revenue. The GOP could do the same thing by pointing out the state's rights attraction, "sin" tax revenue and how much money would be saved by reducing the number of people in prison and jail, but a lot of Republicans like lots of people in jail and they don't like taxes at all. So, you can see the problem, the best thing to do is keep it off the ballot, which was not successful.
The problem is in the analysis.
60% of the voters must vote for the measure for it to pass.
Polling
PPP had a poll last September that shows bipartisan support for medical marijuana.
The base question shows the overall support:
Q3 Would you support or oppose a ballot initiative
allowing the use of marijuana for medical
purposes?
Support ........................................................... 62%
Oppose ........................................................... 26%
Not sure .......................................................... 12%
The GOP angst comes from the break down along party lines. How will those for medical marijuana 46% of the GOP, 68% of Democrats and 74% of Independents affect the rest of the ticket?
A medical marijuana initiative that could be on the ballot next year has overwhelming support with Floridians- 62% say they would support it to only 26% who are opposed. There is a bipartisan consensus on the issue with independents (74/17) and Democrats (68/20) supporting it overwhelmingly and even Republicans (46/41) doing so by a narrow margin.
How much a poll of 579 voters with a 4.1% + or - margin of error is a predictor of an election that was still 14 months away is up for debate.
The more recent (November 2013) Quinnipiac University Poll shows broader support and gives a different look at those for and against.
Marijuana Use
Florida voters support 82 - 16 percent allowing adults to legally use marijuana for medical use if it is prescribed by a doctor. Support is overwhelming among every group surveyed, ranging from 70 - 26 percent among Republicans to 90 - 10 percent among voters 18 to 29 years old.
Voters are divided 48 - 46 percent on allowing adults to legally possess small amounts of marijuana for personal use. There is a gender gap as men support so-called "recreational use" 52 - 44 percent, while women are opposed by a small 49 - 44 percent margin.
"If the folks who want to legalize medical marijuana in Florida can get their proposal on the ballot, they are overwhelmingly favored to prevail next November," Brown said.
From November 12 - 17, Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,646 registered voters with a margin of error of + or - 2.4 percentage points. The survey includes 544 Democrats with a margin of error of + or - 4.2 percentage points.
Again, how accurate is polling 1,646 registered voters going to be for an election a year away?
Another PPP poll was just released and there's a full pdf where I got the breakdown on medical marijuana by 2012 Vote, Political Party, Race Age and Ideology.
The highlights are a mixed bag:
54% of Romney voters support medical marijuana
50% of Republicans support medical marijuana
77% of Independents and other political affiliations support medical marijuana
71% of whites support medical marijuana
71% of people aged 46-65 support medical marijuana
67% of people with moderate ideology support medical marijuana
62% of people of somewhat conservative ideology support medical marijuana
-There's strong public support for a ballot measure that would legalize medical marijuana in the state. 65% of voters support it to only 23% who are opposed. It has greater than 70% support with both independents and Democrats, and even with Republicans it's favored by a 50/42 margin.
The poll of 591 Florida voters including 243 Democratic primary voters was taken from Jan. 16-21. The margin of error for the overall survey is + or - 4.0% and for the Democratic primary portion, it's + or - 6.3%. Survey was conduct through automated telephone interviews.
Another small sample, but the analysis was deeper and gives more to consider.
There is a study, pdf here, that clearly shows that social issues do increase voter turnout; but one study can be either an indicator or an outlier. More studies need to be done.
Pam Bondi and Rick Scott looked at the fact that there are 4.1 million registered GOP, 4.6 million registered Democrats and parsed the 2.9 million other registered political affiliations and went for the safe road. They simply wanted this initiative off the ballot. (Too bad.) With 20% more of Democrats supporting the initiative, they think it will encourage too many Democrats out for the vote and the GOP won't be able to compensate. Yet, that that 74% of independents being for the initiative is worth a deeper look. In Florida, Independents could be Green Party leaners or Libertarians. They could be Tea Party members or socialists.
The ballot initiative survived the Florida Supreme Court, so now, the fight for voter turn out gets more complicated. Compare today to the anti-prohibition message of the 1930's. This time, it's the Democratic Party leading the way out of prohibition.
I think this will be a good thing for voter turnout either way. Somehow,I think it will be good for the Democrats running in Florida come this November.