ON THE BALLOT: THE TEA PARTY VOTES ON AMENDMENTS AND JUDGES

[FCTP]

CLICK HERE FOR THE PDF ABOUT CANDIDATES AND AMENDMENTS ON THE BALLOT.pdf

On October 5, 2010, the First Coast Tea Party held a Ballot Town Hall to discuss the Amendments and Judges appearing on the November 2 ballot in Duval County. The Supervisor of Elections, Jerry Holland, emceed a panel of legal experts and another panel of citizens who had performed their research on all Amendments and Judges. This event was limited in size and 114 people attended. The attendees listened to the presentations and voted on each amendment and judge. Those votes are noted below. These votes reflect the overall consensus of the attendees at the 10/5/10 FCTP Ballot Town Hall. To contact First Coast Tea Party, please go to www.fctpcommunity.org or contact us at [phone].

Information you should know:

 It takes 60% of the votes cast to pass the amendments and to 50% of the votes cast to retain a Judge.

 The language of a citizen amendment is limited to 75 words; amendments placed by the legislature are not limited in length

 To fully understand who is asking for this amendment helps you understand the "agenda" behind it. It is important to know who put the amendment on the ballot and check out the organization, individuals, etc. and their motives.

 Follow the motives and follow the money. What will this amendment cost the people and who will benefit from the amendment?

 Amendments to the Constitution will change the Constitution. In California they have passed so many amendments that the Constitution is almost a joke. And let’s take a look at California and ask ourselves, "Do we want to be them?"

 There are two organizations that have done a very good job in explaining the Amendments. One is the Collins Center at http://www.collinscenter.org/page/FL_Amend_Home and the other is James Madison Institute at http://www.jamesmadison.org/. Both have documents you can download and print out or forward to others and share the knowledge. The James Madison document will help explain some of the reasons why a Yes or No vote were made. We suggest you check out their sites and become engaged in their work. Both have some great tools and will make you a better, informed citizen activist.

 The Judges are more difficult to "judge." There was a lot of discussion about the fact some judges simply judge based on laws that relate to "auto accidents, civil disputes, etc." and you may not be able to determine if they are Constitutionally-driven. Where there was information about their "conservative" or "liberal" leanings, we had a conversation about them. The votes regarding the judges were made after a long discussion and from the eyes of many attorneys who must stand in front of them. Those votes are reflected in this document.

 We encourage you to share this document with everyone you know. We ask that you encourage everyone you know to vote on November 2nd. It is important that we secure Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness for all.

[Cindy Graves]

Florida’s PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS UPDATED
Recommendations: Florida Federation of Republican Women’s Legislative Committee

Amendment 1 – Campaign finance
Repeal of the public financing of statewide candidates who agree to spending limits.
Amendment 1 repeals Florida's system of public financing for statewide elections, created in the 1980s and put in the Constitution by the voters in 1998. Candidates for governor and the state Cabinet got $11.1 million in the last statewide cycle in 2006.
The original, reformist idea was to level the playing field against big money. But leaders of the Legislature call it "welfare for politicians." They have made it tougher to get the money in recent years, and now hope the voters will kill it altogether.

Recommendation –Vote YES to repeal public financing and ask your legislator to consider campaign finance reform in other areas in 2011.

Amendment 2 – Taxes

An additional homestead property tax exemption for members of the United States military or military reserves.

Amendment 2 gives an increased homestead tax exemption (meaning, they have to possess one already) to members of the military and reserves deployed outside the United States. The additional tax break would be based on the number of days of the year they were out of the country.

Recommendation – For

Amendment 4 – Property rights

Requires voter approval of all changes to local comprehensive land-use plans.

Amendment 4, so-called Hometown Democracy, would require voter referenda for local growth planning, wresting control from city and county officials. The intent is to stop what proponents feel is runaway development and destruction of open spaces. Opponents, which include local governments and developers, say the amendment is unworkable and would hamstring decision making.

Recommendation – Against



Two amendments – 5 and 6 deal with redistricting, due to take place in 2012 as a result of the 2010 census. The political implications are huge, particularly for incumbents. Most Democrats favor Amendments 5 & 6, which would redraw boundaries to create compact districts and reduce gerrymandering

Amendment 5 – Redistricting
Amends the current practice of drawing legislative district boundaries.
Amendments 5 and 6 also were put on the ballot by citizen petition. Their stated goal is "fair districts" for the Legislature and Congress, saying that districts should not be drawn by the Legislature to "favor or disfavor" one party or incumbent. Opponents say (among other things) that this is impossible to achieve and will automatically throw redistricting into the courts.
Recommendation – Against
Amendment 6 – Redistricting
Amends the current practice of drawing congressional district boundaries.
Amendments 5 and 6 also were put on the ballot by citizen petition. Their stated goal is "fair districts" for the Legislature and Congress, saying that districts should not be drawn by the Legislature to "favor or disfavor" one party or incumbent. Opponents say (among other things) that this is impossible to achieve and will automatically throw redistricting into the courts.
Recommendation – Against
Amendment 8 – Education

Changes the current “maximum” class sizes to school-wide “average” class sizes.
Amendment 8 would roll back public school class-size restrictions to 2002 levels. This is cost-driven. Local school districts, saddled with shrinking budgets, are hard-pressed to build new classrooms to accommodate smaller classes. The current education studies do not support the position that smaller class sizes lead to increased student performance.

Recommendation – For

Federal Budget Question – Budgets
Asks whether Congress should add an amendment to the U.S. Constitution requiring a balanced federal budget
Recommendation – For


Judges
First District Court of Appeals 2010
Judge Lori Rowe - retain
Judge Kent Weatherall - retain
Judge Paul Hawkes – retain
Judge Jim Wolf- retain
Judge Phillip Padovano - NO
Judge Nikki Clark - NO
CHARLES T. CANADY YES retain
Took office 2008
Merit retention vote 2010
RICKY POLSTON YES retain
Took office 2008
Merit retention vote 2010
JORGE LABARGA NO do not retain
Took office 2009
Merit retention vote 2010
JAMES E.C. PERRY NO do not retain
Took office 2009
Merit retention vote 2010

[Jason Fischer]

I don't think we have every thrown out a judge by ballot, but I certainly hope that LaBarga and Perry get the pink slip!

[FCTP]

http://www.jamesmadison.org/ I just did it and it worked fine.

Hummmmm Try again and do it from a fresh link and not through the document.

[Tracy]

Sorry Jamesmadison link....my mind is elsewhere obviously.:)

[Tracy]

Billie I tried to get the jamestown link to come up but it wouldn't come up is there another link I can use?

[Tracy]

Rosemarie may I quote this for my facebook page?

[Rosemarie Brenneman]

Home » Florida Review » Currently Reading:
Fair Districts Florida- An ACORN Front Group That’s Anything but “Fair”
October 4, 2010 Florida Review 7 Comments
Fair Districts Florida is the organization sponsoring Amendments 5 and 6, having obtained enough signatures to place these amendments on the November ballot; and it also identifies itself as a “non-partisan” organization. The stated goals of these two amendments are to establish “constitutionally mandated fairness standards” to determine the way Florida draws legislative and congressional district lines by drawing ‘compact’ and ‘contiguous’ districts that allegedly don’t advantage incumbents or political parties. Its rabid supporters want the public to believe that that if Amendments 5 and 6 were approved, legislative and congressional districts will somehow not be drawn to favor or disfavor any political party or incumbent.

But let’s be real, please. While the concept of “fair” districts may sound appealing to voters on the surface, all these claims begin to completely unravel under just the slightest bit of scrutiny. First off, Fair Districts Florida was started in 2007 with $25,000 of seed money from none other than ACORN- yes, that same ACORN criminal enterprise that was busted for tax fraud and prostitution last year. The organization also has a clear partisan bias, no matter what Ellen Freidin, its leader and activist progressive Democrat says. The “bipartisan” organization is made up of a bunch of progressive liberals and a couple of Republicans who have been named “honorary co-chairs”- read people who lent their names but not their time to actually research the merits of this cause.

The quest to make legislative districts more “fair” would have much more credibility if Fair Districts Florida sought to draw districts using county & city lines, waterways, or roadways as legislative boundaries, but they’re not. The fact is that Florida’s population mostly follows the coastline, and the lines for counties and cities were drawn long before substantial numbers of people began moving into them. And since our state’s geography is irregular, intra-state mobility is substantial, and Democrat voting blocks are tightly compacted, there is no way for “fairer” districts to be drawn as Fair Districts Florida promotes them.

Researchers recently ran several detailed analyses of Florida electoral results using numerous computer-drawn districts. The results are those which Fair Districts Florida would prefer you ignore.

From the Orlando Sentinel-

Earlier this month, researchers from Stanford University and the University of Michigan presented a yearlong study of where Florida voters live that ran thousands of complex simulations of elections in computer-drawn contiguous and compact districts.

Their models found that even using maps drawn by nonpolitical algorithms, Republicans would still win 59 percent of all the districts.

That’s basically because more Democratic voters live in concentrated clusters in urban cores, while Republican voters are spread out along the suburban and exurban landscape, they concluded.

“Their [Democrats'] larger problem is with the extreme concentration of support in cities, and the constitutional reforms will … not help them there,” said Jonathan Rodden, a political scientist at Stanford who presented the research with University of Michigan professor Jowei Chen at the American Political Science Association annual conference in Washington, D.C..

“In order to achieve a ‘fair’ translation of votes to seats, the Democrats would need to draw very non-compact wedge-shaped districts starting in downtown Miami and reaching out into the suburbs,” Rodden said.

It’s clear that Fair Districts Florida isn’t about “fairness”, it’s about liberals and progressives being more able to successfully enact their agenda in Tallahassee.

Conveniently, Fair Districts Florida has not shown any examples of exactly what a “fair” district looks like, otherwise their partisan motives would be on full display. Fair Districts Florida would simply create more of the same oddly shaped districts that simply benefit Democrats to the maximum extent possible, which brings us to the truth about “fair” districts- redistricting is all about politics and power, as it always has been since the beginning of the country. But this time, it will be the courts drawing “fair” districts instead of the legislature. Funny how no one complained for decades when Democrats drew the state’s districts, but now that they’re out of power in the state, “fairness” all of a sudden becomes a priority. Were either of these amendments to pass, or if Alex Sink were to win the Governorship, ACORN’s corrupted influence will have a substantial say in Florida’s redistricting. Vote No on both of these amendments, and tell Janet Reno that Mickey Mouse shouldn’t be registered to vote for Alan Grayson in Congressional District 8.

[Jackie Dougherty]

Thanks for all your hard work, Billie.
Jackie

[Kurt D Wullenweber]

Billie,

Thanks for putting together another great meeting and another invaluable resource.
You're the greatest!!