During the 2025 legislative session, Florida’s legislators faced a clear decision: protect the ability of Floridians to put constitutional amendments on the ballot so that we can directly vote on policies that govern our lives, or entrench their own power and the power of corporate elites by further restricting the citizen-led amendment process and making it even harder for everyday citizens than it already is.

They chose to make the process harder for We The People, even though Florida’s citizen-led amendment process is already one of the strictest in the nation.

On May 2nd the legislature passed HB 1205 and the Governor signed it into law on the same day. Here’s a top-line summary of what the bill does, noting that some provisions came into effect immediately while others come into effect July 1st (if not stopped by the courts). 

Restricts and intimidates people collecting signed petitions:

• Limits Floridians to collecting only 25 signed “personal use” petition forms in addition to their own and those of their immediate family members (and enforces this with the threat of a 3rd degree felony for collecting more than 25 signed forms).
• Requires anyone – paid or volunteer – who wants to collect more than 25 signed petitions to register with the state as a petition circulator, complete a state training, and include their personal information on each “petition circulator” petition form they collect.
• Completely bans certain people collecting petitions, including anyone who isn’t a Florida resident, anyone who isn’t a U.S. citizen, and any returning citizens who have not had their rights restored.

Intimidates voters by requiring personal information:

• Requires voters to provide either the last four digits of their Social Security number, their Florida driver license number, or their Florida ID card number when signing a petition form.

Increases costs and red tape for organizations sponsoring a citizen-led amendment, while decreasing time and tools for quality assurance:

• Shortens the deadline to submit signed petition forms to election officials from 30 days to just 10 days, with a $50 per form per day fine for “late” petitions.
• Imposes a steep $500 fine if a petition form is returned to the wrong county (even if it is the county the voter listed on the form).
• Fines the sponsor organization $50,000 per person for ineligible or unregistered petition circulators.
• Requires the sponsor organization to pay for new signature validation and notification processes.
• Prohibits providing petition forms with any pre-filled voter information and prohibits filling in missing information on a signed form.

Tosses out signed petitions without notifying voters:

• Invalidates any signed petition forms that are collected by someone who was not properly registered (regardless if the voter’s signature was legitimate).
• Requires Supervisors of Elections to contact every voter who submitted a valid petition to confirm that they really meant to sign it (but does not require contacting voters who had their petition forms rejected).
• Adds the Fiscal Impact Statement to the petition form, and invalidates all of these signed petition forms if the Florida Supreme Court later rejects the Fiscal Impact Statement (judicial review occurs once 25% of the required signatures have been collected).

Increases criminal investigations:

• Requires investigation by the Office of Election Crimes and Security of any petition initiative that has less than a 75% validation rate (even though most “invalid” petitions are due to simple human errors like bad handwriting or putting country instead of county).
• Expands the authority of the Office of Statewide Prosecutor to pursue alleged irregularities or fraud in petition collection under Florida’s racketeering statute.

Two good things:

• Includes a provision for sponsor organizations to be able to avoid certain fines if they report violations themselves.
• Prohibits the use of public funds for political advertisements or other communication to voters about proposed constitutional amendments (will help prevent some of what happened in 2024 when elements of the state government campaigned against the two citizen-led amendments on the ballot, but not strong enough to fully prevent any use of the people’s funds to campaign against the people’s amendments).

Common Cause and other pro-democracy organizations and individuals across Florida advocated strongly against this bill throughout the 2025 legislative session. That advocacy made it clear that the people of Florida are opposed to these restrictions, and it resulted in at least two big wins: the legislature’s initial egregious proposal to require a $1 million bond before signature collection could begin was removed, and the limit on the number of signed petitions that Floridians can collect was increased from 2 to 25.

HB 1205 is an unnecessary, burdensome bill that is yet another step in the legislature’s decades-long campaign to restrict citizen-led amendments and consolidate their own power. But we know that Floridians will do what we have always done: refuse to be silenced. We will find ways to leap these barriers and get the issues that matter to us on to the ballot.