Florida conservatives had been hoping to alter the Florida Constitution to permit funding of religious schools through vouchers via a Constitutional Amendment. Turns out that idea, despite their tipping the initial scales in its favors, isn’t working out, reports the Tampa Bay Times:
Proposal 4 would have struck the Blaine Amendment from the state constitution — which prohibits public money from going to any religious institution, and thus any religiously affiliated private school.
After a short but robust debate on Wednesday, that proposal was “temporarily postponed.”
Donalds said they will not bring it up again.
She also withdrew proposal 45, which would have added language to the constitution saying “nothing herein may be construed to limit the Legislature from making provision for other educational services … that are in addition to the system of free public schools.” …
But any proposals that make it to the ballot in the general election must receive at least 60 percent support to make it into the constitution, and recent polling done by Clearview Research found that Proposal 4 fell far below that threshold. Clearview often does work for Democratic causes but this poll was not done for any particular client, according to president Steven Vancore.
Only 41 percent of respondents said they would vote “yes” on the proposal and 51 percent of respondents declared they would vote “no.” The research firm did not conduct polling on proposal 45.
The Florida Education Association opined that the polling was more likely the reason for the proposals’ removal from consideration by the CRC. A similar amendment was also on the ballot in 2012 and it was defeated.
Far-right ideas are not as popular as one might think if they only get their news from conservative media, although I think 41% is still unsettlingly high.
