TAMPA, Fla. — The majority of Floridians voted to approve Amendment 3 for recreational marijuana and Amendment 4 for abortion rights. They're both projected to fail anyway.
According to preliminary results, 55.89% of Floridians voted "yes" on Amendment 3 while 57.14% voted "yes" on Amendment 4.
But if both measures received more than 50% of the vote, why didn't they pass?
It all comes back to a Florida constitutional amendment passed in 2006.
Why Florida amendments don't pass with 50% of the vote
Florida, along with most other states, used to require a simple, 50% majority to pass a ballot measure.
However, things changed back in 2006 when an amendment raised the threshold for voter approval to 60%. As the Tallahassee Democrat reports, the amendment, ironically, passed with just 57.78% of the vote.
At the time, according to the news outlet, some Florida lawmakers and large business groups argued it was too easy to change the state's amendment and pushed for the higher voter approval threshold.
There were also critics at the time upset that the super-majority requirement didn't even meet the 60% threshold it was imposing.
In recent years, several Florida lawmakers — including Sen. Joe Gruters (R-Sarasota) and Rep. Rick Roth (R-West Palm Beach) — have proposed even stricter bills that would require a two-thirds majority, or 66.67% of the vote, for an amendment to pass.
“For Americans to remain free, and to be protected from our own government, we must hold our Constitution sacred,” Roth said in 2023, according to The Florida Bar.
Those bills have died in committees before ever gaining a lot of traction.
Taking it back to present day — because both amendments 3 and 4 fell short of that 60% threshold, neither passed, despite being approved by the majority of Florida voters.
