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The Republican effort to kill a ballot initiative that would protect abortion access in the state of Florida is now coming to people’s homes.
Gov. Ron DeSantis’ state election police are making house calls to question voters about signing a petition to get an abortion rights amendment on the November ballot.
“Ron (DeSantis) has repeatedly used state power to interfere with a citizen-led process to get reproductive freedom on the ballot,” Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said on Monday. “This is their latest desperate attempt before Election Day.”
Amendment 4 proposes to protect abortion access before a baby could survive on its own, which is about 24 weeks, or when an abortion is medically necessary. This measure would overturn Florida’s six-week abortion ban, which DeSantis signed in April 2023. Six weeks is typically one or two weeks after a person finds out that they are pregnant, but it is sometimes too soon to know. The ban is so restrictive that even Donald Trump criticized it late last month, although he later clarified that he would vote against the measure to overturn it.
The Tampa Bay Times reported last week that two plainclothes officers showed up at southwest Florida resident Isaac Menasche’s home and asked if he had signed the petition. The police said they were looking into voter fraud.
“I’m not a person who is going out there protesting for abortion,” Menasche said. “I just felt strongly and I took the opportunity when the person asked me, to say yeah, I’ll sign that petition.” He had signed the petition at a farmer’s market last year.
Becky Castellanos, another southwest Florida resident, also told the Times that a police officer came to her door. The officer said that one of her family members could be a victim of fraud. He asked her relative about the abortion petition, and the relative verified that he signed it.
“It didn’t surprise me that they were doing something like this to try to debunk these petitions to get it taken off of the ballot,” she said.
Florida Department of State spokesperson Ryan Ash told the Times that they have found evidence of illegal conduct related to petitions.
“We have a duty to seek justice for Florida citizens who were victimized by fraud and safeguard the integrity of Florida’s elections,” Ash said. “Our office will continue this investigation and make referrals to [the Florida Department of Law Enforcement] as appropriate.”
Florida’s secretary of state, Cord Byrd, a DeSantis appointee, has made the unusual step of asking at least four counties to send in tens of thousands of petition forms for the abortion amendment — which have already been confirmed to have been signed honestly — so the state can inspect them. A supervisor told the Times that this was unprecedented.
Last week, Rolling Stone reported that DeSantis and the Heritage Foundation added language to Florida ballots with misinformation about the amendment, supposedly as part of a “financial impact statement.” The language says that the amendment would result in more abortions, and that “an increase in abortions may negatively affect the growth of state and local revenues over time.”
The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration — led by a DeSantis appointee — has also set up an anti-Amendment 4 website, claiming the ballot measure “threatens women’s safety” and “threatens to expose women and children to health risks which the Florida legislature has spent years working to mitigate.” A banner on the website, which bears the state agency’s seal, says: “Florida is protecting life: Don’t let the fearmongers lie to you.”
It is “unprecedented for the State to expressly advocate against a citizen-led initiative,” Bacardi Jackson, the executive director of the ACLU of Florida, told the Times. Elections lawyer Barry Richard, who worked on the amendment, said the state’s website is “completely inappropriate.”
The police visits are reminiscent of 2022, when police arrived at Florida residents’ homes to arrest them for alleged voter fraud.
