They vary by subject, but the six constitutional amendments on the November ballot can be divided into two distinct categories. A proposal to legalize recreational marijuana and another that would guarantee access to abortion are citizen initiatives that made the ballot after proponents collected more than the required 891,000 signatures and the Florida Supreme Court approved the wording of the amendments. The other four are there because the Florida Legislature voted to put them before voters.
Those four amendments won’t attract the millions of dollars in donations to drive ad buys like Amendments 3 (marijuana) and 4 (abortion) — and they don’t push buttons anywhere near as hot, but they do stand to change how public schools are governed, how statewide political campaigns are financed, the value of your homestead exemption and whether the right to hunt and fish in Florida could be challenged.
With all the attention on marijuana and abortion, the other proposals may not get the consideration they deserve, says Carol Weissert, a Florida State University political science professor emerita and past director of the LeRoy Collins Institute.
That’s especially true for the school board and public financing proposals. “I just hope that when they’re ticking down to (Amendments) 3 and 4, they’ll take a minute and say ‘Why are we taking this out of the Constitution? If it’s a good idea, let’s do it. If it’s not, why are we doing it?’”
To help voters decide, here’s a summary of each amendment along with the arguments for and against them.
AMENDMENT 1
Restoring Partisan School Board Races
TITLE: Partisan Election of Members of District School Boards
WHAT IT DOES: Asks voters to reverse a decision made in the 1998 election that made school board elections nonpartisan.
PROS: Restoring partisan school board elections in 2026 would mark “a return to normalcy” since that’s how Florida elections worked for 150 years, says State Rep. Spencer Roach (R-Fort Myers), who sponsored the resolution putting the amendment on the ballot. A change came in 1998, when voters approved an amendment from the state Constitutional Revision Commission to make the races nonpartisan. But when schools were shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, parents got a better look at what was happening in the classroom, and many didn’t like what they saw, Roach says. That sparked protests at school board meetings. School boards should “reflect the social values of their communities,” he says, but the current law allows candidates to “hide who they are from voters.” He calls the amendment “the most important election on the ballot ever” because school board members “more than anyone else are in a position of influence to influence the next generation of citizen leaders — people who will be steering the ship of state at some point in the future.” If it does pass, Roach predicts similar measures would follow to make municipal and judicial elections partisan, too. “That has been a goal of mine and a goal of many Republicans for a long time as well,” he says. “There’s a much longer play here than just school boards, and people that are voting for or against this may not have that in mind, may not care. But I think it’s a point that should not be lost on voters.”
CONS: Partisan boards are likely to be more contentious, says Meredith Mountford, a former superintendent from Lake Geneva, Wisc., now an associate professor at Florida Atlantic University’s Department of Educational Leadership and Research Methodology. And in some districts with roughly even voter registration figures, majorities could shift frequently. “So you’ll get this curriculum swing every time the political affiliation changes,” Mountford says. “That’s not good for kids. That curriculum should be smackdab in the middle.” School board elections have grown more partisan in recent cycles, observes Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association union representing schoolteachers. He attributes that to Gov. Ron DeSantis endorsing candidates far more often than his Republican predecessors and the emergence of groups like Moms for Liberty, which led protests and drives to police curriculum and remove books from school libraries. Before that, he says, school board meetings “where you couldn’t tell anyone’s political party” often saw greater teamwork. “What you saw school board members doing at meetings was working together to make sure they met the needs of students, to make sure that we were doing everything we could to keep students safe. That’s how it should be,” Spar says. “And that is what you see when you don’t have partisan school board elections and you don’t have politicians trying to infuse their ideology into school board elections.”
AMENDMENT 2
Making Hunting and Fishing a Constitutional Right
TITLE: Right to Fish and Hunt
WHAT IT DOES: Establishes a constitutional right to hunt and fish in Florida and declares hunting and fishing as the “preferred means of responsibly managing and controlling fish and wildlife.”
PROS: Vote Yes on Amendment 2 Chairman Joshua Kellam says the amendment is “a pro-active approach” to stave off any future effort to erode or criminalize fishing or hunting rights. “Florida is in a great position right now to protect its rights for the future ... so that if there ever is a change and we’re not in the position that we’re in today with a strong, conservative base that is primarily the fishers and hunters in this state, we would be in a much worse spot where we could get stronger laws and regulations on hunting and fishing.” Kellam, who served on the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission from 2019 through 2024, emphasizes other language in the amendment reinforcing the commission’s authority to govern fishing and hunting in the state. It won’t change the length of hunting seasons or bag limits — and it might also help foster appreciation for the outdoors and the need for conservation. “We see this as a great opportunity to raise awareness that Florida has amazing fishing and hunting opportunities, recreational outdoor activities that our next generation and generations that are here today should be utilizing to its fullest capacity. This is a beautiful state that we live in — a lot of people say this is paradise — and we get to live in it every day.”
CONS: To opponents, Amendment 2 is a solution in search of a problem. “There’s no effort ... to do away with hunting and fishing in Florida,” says Chuck O’Neal, an environmental activist from Apopka who is leading the NoTo2.org committee. “It’s a contrived threat.” Sierra Club Florida, meanwhile, calls the amendment “deceptive and dangerous,” saying it could lead to “hunting in public places such as parks, as well as the private property of individual citizens.” Gary Cochran, a former Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission conservation and planning administrator now serving on the executive committee for the Big Bend Group Sierra Club chapter, is concerned that the amendment casts hunting and fishing as the “preferred means of responsibly managing and controlling fish and wildlife” — particularly when “fish and wildlife agencies across the country were primarily founded because of the issue of over-fishing and over-hunting.” Amendment 2 is “not an easy decision for us,” he told Florida Trend. “If that statement weren’t in there, I think that’s the one that’s causing so much heartburn.”
The Citizen Initiatives
Summer polling indicated both amendments were positioned to attain the required 60% support from voters to become law.
AMENDMENT 3
Recreational Weed
TITLE: Adult Personal Use of Marijuana
The result of a petition drive funded by medical marijuana dispensary giant Trulieve, the proposal would legalize the use of recreational marijuana by adults who are 21 or older. As of July, the company had contributed more than $75 million toward the legalization effort via the Smart & Safe Florida political committee. It has used some of that money to run ads emphasizing the product testing and regulation that would come with legalization compared to illicit sales and saying the tax money generated would benefit public schools. Billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin donated $12 million to oppose legalization, saying it “would create a monopoly for large marijuana dispensaries” and lead to “more dangerous roads, a higher risk of addiction among our youth, and an increase in crime.”
AMENDMENT 4
Abortion Rights
TITLE: Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion
The proposal would invalidate Florida’s six-week abortion ban and restore a woman’s right to an abortion up to the point of viability, which is around 24 weeks or later if deemed necessary to a woman’s health by a health care provider. Many women don’t realize they are pregnant at six weeks, and the current law has “no real exceptions for rape or the health of the woman,” says Lauren Brenzel, Yes on 4’s campaign director.
Backers of Floridians Protecting Freedom, the sponsor of Amendment 4, include ACLU Florida, Planned Parenthood, the Tides Foundation, and philanthropist/Democratic Party activist Marsha Laufer, who has contributed $4.5 million to the committee. The group had collected nearly $48 million through the end of August to support the effort. Conservative groups, meanwhile, have been standing up a number of political action committees to try to defeat the measure. The biggest, Florida Voters Against Extremism, includes the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Florida Family Policy Council, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Florida Family Action and the Florida Republican Party. They say the amendment opens the door to third-trimester abortions and “would make abortion the only medical procedure that minors could undergo without parental consent.”
AMENDMENT 5
Indexing Homestead Exemptions for Inflation
TITLE: Annual Adjustments to the Value of Certain Homestead Exemptions
WHAT IT DOES: Most homeowners receive two $25,000 property tax exemptions for their primary residence — one for school taxes and one for everything else. If your home’s assessed value is $500,000, the exemptions mean you pay taxes on $450,000 instead. If Amendment 5 passes, the non-school homestead exemption would increase each year by a percentage equal to the Consumer Price Index. An analysis from the state House estimated a $22.8 million impact statewide next year, growing to more than $110 million by 2028-29. The amendment would take effect Jan. 1, 2025.
PROS: House sponsor James Buchanan (R-Sarasota) says the idea came from a constituent on a fixed income as a way to bring down property taxes and offset inflation for primary residents. In a hypothetical year in which inflation rises 5%, the exemption would increase to $26,500. The savings wouldn’t amount to much in a given year, Buchanan acknowledges, but it compounds over time, “which would add value to that homestead exemption.” If the amendment is approved, the exemption would not come back down if inflation ebbs. “It’s going to reduce the cost of home ownership for Florida primary residents over time,” he says. “It’s going to encourage home ownership.” Local governments are capable of forecasting tax collections and budgeting appropriately, Buchanan says. He emphasizes that the relief will not affect school tax collections.
CONS: The amendment could create “unintended consequences for local taxpayers and cities,” the Florida League of Cities wrote in a February letter urging lawmakers not to put it on the ballot. “It’s a tax shift, not a tax cut,” the letter said, because local governments will have to fill the gap somehow, possibly by increasing millage rates or cutting services. That likely means businesses, renters and second homeowners will pay more, Florida Association of Counties Deputy Director Bob McKee said during a January legislative hearing. They already pay 80% of their taxable value, he said, while homesteaded properties typically pay about 45%. “We cannot support shifting more burden to our businesses,” McKee told the House State Affairs Committee.
AMENDMENT 6
Ending Public Financing
TITLE: Repeal of Public Campaign Financing Requirement
WHAT IT DOES: Amendment 6 would reverse a decision voters made in 1998 to make state matching funds available to candidates running for governor and the state Cabinet.
PROS: The principle behind the 1998 public financing push was to attract a wider spectrum of candidates, but records indicate that’s not what happened. Matching money has gone to the Republican and Democratic nominees, with Republicans accepting more money because they had more eligible contributions. More than $13 million in public funds went into the 2022 election. Gov. Ron DeSantis received $7,302,617 and his Democratic challenger, Charlie Crist, got $3,887,600, according to state data. In the CFO race, Republican Jimmy Patronis received $221,915 in public matching funds while Democrat Adam Hattersley received $189,289. Incumbent Attorney General Ashley Moody received $291,333, while Democrat Daniel Uhlfelder received $177,586 in the Democratic primary. To receive the money, candidates must agree to limit their campaign spending. In 2022, that was slightly more than $30.2 million for the governor’s race and about $15.1 million for Cabinet seats, representing $2 and $1 for each registered voter respectively. Those limits do not apply for candidates who don’t seek public matching money. Sponsor Travis Hutson (R-Palm Coast) called the use of taxpayer money in campaigns “absurd” and said it could be better spent on “other things voters want like education, health care, [and] affordable housing.”
CONS: During a January committee hearing, State Sen. Tina Scott Polsky (D-Boca Raton) expressed concern the amendment was “one-sided” and “will help one party over the other. It is very clear that the Republican Party has a lot more money funding outside groups, special interest groups, who help to pay for the campaigns than the Democratic Party has in Florida.” It also would favor wealthy candidates who can afford to self-finance much of their campaigns. Common Cause Florida has railed against the amendment, which it says will leave candidates “more beholden to wealth special interests” and “[limit] the voice of small-dollar donors and ordinary voters.”