A citizen’s initiative to expand Medicaid in Florida has been bumped back to 2028 instead of next year. Some political watchers say that it’s not a surprise after a law passed this year made it harder to get proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot.
The new law introduced stricter regulations and penalties for those involved in petition drives. Mitch Emerson is Executive Director of Florida Decides Healthcare. That’s the group behind the push to expand Medicaid, the state and federally funded health insurance program for low-income people.
Emerson said the law has directly harmed democracy in Florida.
“HB 1205, was about changing the rules in the middle of the game, and it was an attempt to put up hurdles and sabotage the effort of Floridians to participate in democracy through petition collection. Really, when the state threatens groups like ours with racketeering charges and massive fines for small paperwork mistakes like that is not about democracy. That's about intimidation,” he said.
The changes to state law included requiring ballot circulators to be Florida residents and American Citizens, shortening the deadline to turn in signed ballots, requiring groups circulating petitions to post a million-dollar bond, and more.
A judge has temporarily blocked the circulator residency requirements from taking effect, but most of the other provisions are still in place as litigation is pending.
University of Central Florida Political Science Professor Aubrey Jewitt said the announcement from Florida Decides Healthcare didn’t surprise him.
“I think most political observers in Florida know that has been the intent of the legislature over a number of years, is to make it more difficult for people to gather petitions to change the Florida constitution,” he said.
While the bill was going through committee, Fort Myers Republican Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka argued the goal of the measure is to keep out-of-state wealthy interests from changing state law, pointing to abortion rights and recreational marijuana ballot initiatives that failed by slim margins in 2024.
“The process has been taken over by out of state fraudsters looking to make a quick buck and by special interests’ intent on buying their way into our Constitution,” she said.
Jewitt thinks the new law hasn’t had the same impact on large initiatives because he says they can afford heightened costs but smaller efforts like Medicaid expansion are facing bigger effects.
“The restrictions they put on the fines and potential for felony charges that they put on have made it, I won't even say, virtually impossible. It really have made it impossible for a true grassroots movement to get the signatures that they need. I mean, the only people that are going to be able to do this, are people with access to 10’s of millions of dollars,” he said.
More than a million Floridians are in a healthcare coverage gap. They earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, but they cannot afford private health insurance. Federally, Medicaid is set to be cut by almost a trillion dollars over the next ten years.
Emerson said his group is not deterred from trying to get the proposal on the ballot in 2028. He says especially with those cuts, Floridians need Medicaid expansion.
“I think that bringing in 10 and a half billion dollars of Floridian’s federal tax dollars from instead of sending it to states like New York or California and keeping it in Florida, that's going to help keep hospitals open, that's going to keep doctors in our state, it's going to improve coverage,” he said.
Florida is just one of 10 states that has not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.