When the constitutional amendment to bring medical marijuana was first discussed in the state of Florida, it was assumed it would be a huge advantage to the Democratic nominee because it would boost turnout and bring a huge advantage against Rick Scott.  As recently as three weeks ago, there was a series of stories about how the medical marijuana initiative could drive out young voters and be a deciding factor in this election. The promise was that this important demographic who do not usually vote will be motivated to come out in support of Amendment 2 and these people would naturally vote for Crist.   Bloomberg published an predicting this issue will decide the Governor’s race and give overwhelming favor to the Democratic nominee.

But now, weeks before the election, is that actually going to happen?    With so many issues coming up in this election, will the next four years really be determined by Amendment 2? The overwhelming answer is that Amendment 2 is under-performing both in polling and in projected turnout gains for the Democrats. Now, if Amendment 2 passes at all, it will be by a slight margin and it looks like it will be Charlie who will be motivating the voter turn-out, not the other way around. What is becoming painfully obvious is that Amendment 2 will not be the crux of this election. While it may move younger voters slightly, this issue will not define this election in any manner like it was projected to. Instead of carrying Crist over the finish line, if this Amendment passes it will be limping over the finish line with just enough votes. As I talked about last week in my piece on Constitutional Amendments, it needs 60% to pass and that is looking unlikely at this point. What went wrong?

The answer is complicated. The claim that a marijuana initiative would galvanize voters should have been more scrutinized from the beginning. There is simply little motivation for young people to go vote for something that is already readily available in most areas. While the idea of legal marijuana is appealing, there is the ‘medical’ aspect that leaves a lot of questions – and for the group that is most likely to not have health insurance, going to the doctor  is extremely questionable. The young vote unquestionably helped Obama, but it is looking more and more likely that most of them will stay home this November. They are hard to reach and expensive to motivate and neither campaign has done a particular good job trying to galvanizing the youth vote. Besides the “Yes to the Dress attempt”, very little appeals have been made to millennials in this election at all. John Morgan, in all his glorious attempts, has done little to gather support for the measure in his press tour and, beyond the comedy aspect, motivated precious few to turn out.

Outside money has also had a huge influence on this race and did blunt a lot of the support. Sheldon Adelson has pumped millions of dollars into the counter effort for the measure and no doubt, his efforts will increase the opposition. That will weaken any turnout impact of Amendment 2 across the state for Democrats. And somewhere along the line, the language of the amendment became unclear. While the idea of medical marijuana is extremely popular, Overall, the increased attention has only led to confused about the measure – questions in the language, in the enforcement, and questions on the growing requirements all decrease confidence in this bill and lessen the excitement.
Above all, there was little evidence that Democrats fully owned this issue to begin with. While all Democrats across the state running have embraced the measure, in the debate last Friday Crist was very clear that he did not support recreational marijuana use. While the whole legislature spent weeks debating Charlotte’s Web in the spring, there is mixed reactions to fully owning up to recreational pot legalization – which would motivate more voters. These half measures are hard to get support for, especially with the increased hurdle of 60% that other state legislatures do not have. Although many are in support of the measure, little has been done to highlight or champion the issue.  When compared to the issue of Duke Energy in the Tampa Bay area, the Democrats simply found better issues to increase voter-turnout in economic issues.   Minimum wage, transparency, and equal pay have worked and the need for Amendment 2 support has simply decreased.

Is there a way to revive the measure? If Amendment 2 wants to pass, it has to look beyond the youth vote. The bottom line is that United for Care is going to have to step it up in the last few weeks and drag those voters to the polls. And it has a chance, but the polling numbers are looking unsure.  While they have put together a small coalition, the funding and drive to pull this off is dwarfed compared to the efforts of Amendment 1.   Although it is likely that the measure will get over 50%, there isn’t enough support among the more moderate middle that can be counted on to vote for it.  Even if Crist manages to pull off a win, he will not win 60% of the vote, so there has to be some Republican endorsement of the issue and that simply hasn’t happened.  While it may happen  (and we even here are the Squeeze endorsed the measure!),  the promises that it would deliver an easy Democratic victory are long gone.