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Washington Post: 2012 Is A Busy Year For Ballot Measures

Mail ballot
Jeff Gitchel/Flickr

Anyone in Florida who has already gotten their absentee ballot for this year's presidential election will notice that there are a lot - A LOT - of ballot measures.

According to The Washington Post, voters all over the country will be voting on almost 200 ballot measures.

It is a particularly busy year for ballot questions. There are 174 around the country, including 12 examples of little-used kind of initiative that could allow voters to repeal laws recently passed by the state legislature.

The Post reports also highlighted some of the more controversial ballot measures, which includes one that is aimed at exempting states "from parts of President Obama’s health-care law."

Florida is one of those states-- along with Alabama, Missouri, Montana and Wyoming.

Here that ballot measure is also known as Amendment 1, but experts say it might actually be a meaningless ballot measure.

When Florida Senate President Mike Haridopolos said June 2011 that his measure would allow Floridians to "opt-out" of the health care law.

However, Politifact ruled this claim to be flat-out False.

All the state constitutional amendment guarantees is standing for a lawsuit against the federal government. Floridians could only "opt out" of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate if the U.S. Supreme Court rules against the supremacy of the federal law. That’s a major, gigantic if. There’s at least a remote enough chance that the court would rule in favor of Florida in a lawsuit, Haridopolos’statement doesn’t warrant a Pants On Fire ruling. However, it’s clearly False.

This year, Floridians will vote on a whopping 11 ballot measures. The sample ballot in Miami-Dade is 10 pages long.

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