Do not confuse Amendment 4 on the 2020 ballot with the Amendment 4 that passed two years ago, the one giving ex-felons the right to vote once they’ve done their time. The 2018 amendment was intended to give more Floridians a voice in government. The 2020 amendment is meant to deny Floridians a voice in government. Advertisement 00:08 05:09 The two could not be more different. (To avoid confusion, this and future editorials will refer to the 2020 ballot question as No. 4, which is how the amendments appear on the ballot.) PAID POSTWhat Is This? Protecting Ford diesel engine fuel systems. Protecting Ford diesel engine fuel systems. There are a number of important things to consider when choosing a fuel filter for a diesel engine. SEE MORESponsored Content by Ford Motor Company Amendment No. 4 would make the already formidable process of amending the Florida Constitution all but impossible, except for corporations and the super-rich. How? It would require that Floridians, after passing an amendment with at least 60% of the vote — the highest voting bar in America — do the same thing again in the next election. All amendments would have to pass not once but twice. Only one other state, Nevada, requires two votes, and those only have to be a majority, not 60%. Advertisement 00:00 02:39 Had No. 4 been in effect in 2018, Floridians who passed that year’s historic measure restoring rights for ex-felons would be facing the same question again this year. The people who worked and fought so hard to right a racially inspired, post-Civil War wrong would be forced to do it all over again. No. 4 is intended to ensure that Floridians don’t get the chance to vote on that or other citizen-led issues, like smaller classroom sizes, a state lottery, term limits, casinos, smoking in restaurants, a minimum wage, fair voting districts and medical marijuana. If No. 4 passes, back-to-back campaigns would become far too expensive for grass-roots organizations that want to change the constitution, while the opponents would get an automatic do-over. Citizens would be thrown out of the amendment ballgame, and the backers of No. 4 know that. It’s exactly what they want. The exception might be if big corporations or a couple of tycoons want to duke it out, like what happened in Nevada two years ago when casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and financier Warren Buffett pumped millions into a campaign to open the state’s power-generation markets. In other words, citizen-led initiatives would become a game for the rich, and only the rich. No. 4 is nothing more than the latest attack in a long, relentless war — waged by the Florida Chamber of Commerce and their pals in the state Legislature — to cut regular Floridians out of the amendment process. They’ve been chipping away at citizens’ ability to change the constitution for nearly 20 years, in particular backing laws that made it much harder to collect petition signatures to get questions on the ballot, known as citizen initiatives. Citizen initiatives are one of several ways Florida can change its constitution. The process is long, tedious and expensive. Another way for an amendment to get on the ballot is for the state Legislature to simply take a vote. So it’s no surprise that the Legislature has put twice as many amendments on the ballot since 1978 as citizen-led initiatives have. But you don’t see lawmakers scrambling to make it harder for them to get amendments on the ballot. This year’s amendment No. 4 is itself a citizen initiative. But which citizens? Who’s behind the movement to make Florida, already the hardest state in the nation for citizen initiatives to pass, an even steeper climb? A good question, with no good answer. The political committee backing No. 4 is called “Keep Our Constitution Clean PC.” It might as well be called “Keep Our Money Secret.” The committee has raised about $9 million so far, all of it from a nonprofit that goes by basically the same name, Keep Our Constitution Clean, Inc. Political Pulse Newsletter Weekly Political news from Central Florida and across the state. ENTER YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS The nonprofit isn’t disclosing where it gets its money. All that shows up on the political committee’s campaign finance report is the legally laundered money from the nonprofit. Welcome back to the shadowy world of dark money. The plan here is to use Florida’s awful campaign finance laws to hide who is bankrolling this latest insult to the voters as long as possible. Backers of No. 4 say they just want to preserve the sanctity of Florida’s constitution. What a load. If that were the case, why not propose an amendment that makes it harder for the Legislature to junk up the constitution? Right now the Legislature has to have a 60% votes of both chambers to put an amendment on the ballot. Why not bump that up to two-thirds of both chambers, mirroring the U.S. Constitution’s requirement for the House and Senate? Amendment No. 4 is the worst of the six amendments voters will decide on. The worst by a long shot. Its lack of transparency, its contempt for Florida’s voters, its attempt to cut them out of the governing process. Florida’s voters should vote no and send amendment No. 4 back to the dark place it came from. Election endorsements are the opinion of the Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board, which consists of Opinion Editor Mike Lafferty, Jennifer A. Marcial Ocasio, Jay Reddick, David Whitley and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Sentinel Columnist Scott Maxwell participates in interviews and deliberations.