A majority of Floridians voted for abortion rights, but GOP lawmakers aren't swayed

[In It to Win It]

Sun Sentinel - Gift Link

Abortion rights advocates want to take their fight back to the Florida Legislature armed with a new talking point: Their cause got about as much support from Florida voters as President-elect Donald Trump did.

But the appeal is unlikely to persuade a Republican supermajority whose members were mostly lockstep against Amendment 4.

That assessment — disheartening though it may be to advocates — rests firmly on an Election Day conundrum: The same electorate that voted 57% in favor of a ballot initiative to protect abortion access also returned to Tallahassee a Legislature nearly identical to the one that approved the six-week abortion ban the initiative sought to overturn.

“Most of the people who got elected voted for the bill that we passed,” said incoming state Senator Randy Fine, R-Palm Bay, who served in the House before winning election to the Senate. “They supported it then. I don’t know why they wouldn’t support it now.”

Supporters of Amendment 4 insist Florida is on their side, with a vote falling just shy of the 60% needed to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.

Amendment 4 won about the same percentage of the vote as Trump, who fetched 56% in what the Florida GOP called a “historic” win and the biggest margin of victory for a president in Florida in nearly four decades. Because more people voted in Florida’s presidential race than on the abortion measure, Trump got slightly more votes — about 41,600 — than Amendment 4.

[LearnedHand]

1. Vote for the Leopards Eating Faces party

and you don't get to complain about the leopards eating your face.

[retread]

2. No surprise. Look at where they "work".