Lower Keys League of Women Voters
2022 Legislative Priorities
1. Voting
Remove the voter suppression elements from SB90.
Shorten the time between book closing date and an election to ten days.
Ensure that no further limitations are passed restricting returning citizens’ rights to vote and seek to have the conversion to a civil lien to be considered a completion of sentence for financial obligations.
Support automatic registration (opt-out system), same-day voter registration, and improved online voter registration.
2. Redistricting
Ensure that Fair District Standards are adhered to for the Redistricting of Congressional and Florida Legislative Districts.
Support public participation in the process and urge the Florida Legislature to conduct redistricting in an open, transparent, interactive, and constitutionally-compliant manner.
3. Home Rule/ Preemption
Education: Address mask mandates and the attack on locally elected school boards. The State is making decisions on what and how to teach (example is racial history in America).
Elections: Fight legislation that prevents or impairs locally elected County Supervisors of Elections from implementing previous passed laws to make voting easier and fairer.
Government: Take action on First Amendment issues regarding protests with an unfair bias against those protesting for racial justice.
Environment: Preemption adversely affects local laws that were passed to address the issues of climate change.
4. Health Care
Support women’s reproductive rights, privacy and the availability of services.
Expand access to health care including support for Medicaid expansion.
Reduce disparities in health outcomes, particularly among minority populations.
Support our medical community and local decision makers in following the CDC Guidelines to mitigate and prevent the effects and spread of COVID-19.
And including the tenets of the Reproductive Health & Justice
Defend against passage of any Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (“TRAP”) laws singling out the medical practices of doctors who provide abortions and impose on them requirements that are different and more burdensome than those imposed on other medical practices.
Defend against further taxpayer funding and support of anti-abortion fake women’s health centers (also known as crisis pregnancy centers).
Defend against passage of any barriers to abortion access, including: gestational limits, limitations on types of procedures in abortion provision, expansion of state-mandated counseling, waiting periods, or parental involvement with minors seeking abortion care, and efforts to remove abortion access protections from the Privacy Clause in the Florida constitution.
5. Education
Promote adequate and equitable funding of public education and oppose use of public funding for the expansion of funding of private education, including through voucher programs.
Support a curricular framework that has broad common standards developed by educational experts that serves as a guide to local districts, including the historic mandates to teach Holocaust, antisemitism and African American History, and associated messages of tolerance and understanding, and the new standard to teach civics.
Support legislation that would require charter school contracts to stipulate how state and local capital outlay funding and the assets they purchase will (and must) be recouped by the school district if the charter school closes or the building is sold.
Support any legislation that promotes diversity and nondiscrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, gender identity, nationality, and ability status in all publicly funded schools. Oppose any legislation that aims to give tax dollars to private schools that discriminate (in policy or in practice) based on those criteria.
6. Natural Resources
Support legislation focused on improving water quality.
Support resiliency and adaptation to Integrative Climate Change and Sea Level Rise.
Support funding for completing Everglades Agricultural Area and Florida Forever.
Support expanded use of solar energy and an electric vehicle network of charging stations.