The U.S. state of Florida has had a system of direct voting since 1886, as the Florida Constitution of 1885 required voter approval for all constitutional amendments. Since then, the system has undergone several overhauls. In 1968, voters approved an amendment creating an initiative and referendum system.
The Florida Constitution of 1885 carried a section requiring voter approval for all constitutional amendments. This system remained largely unchanged until 1968, when an amendment was passed creating a system by which citizens could place amendments on the ballot using the initiative process. Since then, state officials have regularly attempted to restrict the systems use, including by charging for signature verification, requiring amendments to reach a three-thirds supermajority (60%) voter approval to pass (which was approved by voters as a legislative referred constitutional amendment in 2006 in a ballot measure election), and restricting signature collection. As a result of these restrictions, Florida is one of the few states in which paid signature collectors are commonplace. In 2021, the state legislature passed a bill limiting individual contributions to ballot measure campaigns to $3,000, claiming that such a restriction would reduce fraud. In 2022, a federal judge blocked the bill from going into effect, citing donors First Amendment rights as the core legal reasoning.
Some ballot measures passed in Florida have been the subject of controversy or extended discussion. In 2000, a ballot measure requiring a high-speed rail project be started within 3 years was passed. The measure, which had been the subject of lengthy legal proceedings before making it onto the ballot, was estimated to cost at least $5 billon. After several years of little progress, a second ballot measure repealing the requirement passed with 64% of the vote in 2004. In 2008, Amendment 2 banning same-sex marriages passed with 62% of the vote, along with similar measures in Arizona, Florida, and Arkansas. A study of the vote by the University of Florida later found that lower education levels were a strong predictor of support for the measure. In 2018, Florida voters passed Amendment 4, which extended voting rights to most former felons who had completed their sentences. Despite passing with 65% of the vote, state officials were slow to implement the updated guidelines, preventing many newly eligible voters from voting for several years. In 2022, Amendment 4 was reintroduced to the public eye after Governor Ron DeSantis announced the prosecution of twenty former felons who had been misled into thinking they were eligible to vote under the Amendment.
Several academic studies of Florida ballot measures and their connections to other aspects of the political sphere have been conducted. A study of the language used by ballot measures found that voters were more likely to support ballot measures with a "local" framing than ones with a statewide or national framing. Another study examining petition signing found that Florida residents who signed ballot measure petitions were significantly more likely to vote in the upcoming election regardless of whether the measure they supported made it to the ballot. An analysis of newspaper endorsements found that even if voters in Florida disagreed with a newspaper's political alignment, a newspaper's endorsement of a ballot measure was positively connected to that measure passing or failing.
There are several types of ballot measures in Florida, including a mix of citizen-initiated types and government-initiated types.