Florida police investigate people who signed ballot initiative
An office created after wave of election fraud allegations has been weaponized to attack abortion rights amendment
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called on police to interrogate voters who signed a petition for an abortion rights ballot initiative.
Several news outlets reported that DeSantis intends to send a special contingent of officers to thousands of voters’ homes before the election.
“We're going to continue seeing these tricks and tactics being used by the governor's office,” said Nikki Fried, chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party.
“I just am baffled by the brazenness of the governor's office. Clearly illegal, and they don't care.”
In April, Florida’s state supreme court ruled that the ballot initiative could go before voters. Known as Amendment 4, it states that no law should prohibit or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the mother’s health. The amendment specifically lays out that it does not deal with parental notification.
The recent tactic had its seed planted years ago when the state legislature passed a bill that gave the governor broad discretionary power to the governor to oversee campaigns. The Office of Election Crimes and Security was established in 2022 after the wave of accusations by former President Donald Trump about how he was cheated out of a victory in his 2020 campaign. The unit investigates fraud allegations.
Fried said the officers had knocked on doors and made people believe they had fraudulently signed the petition. They come with ten pages of background information on the individual, including past police reports or government-kept information.
“This is government heavy-handed,” Fried said. “It is intimidation of voters.”
Another aspect of DeSantis’ antiabortion resistance is that he’s used a government-funded website for the Agency for Health Care Administration to spread disinformation about the ballot initiative. It describes abortion rights activists as ‘fear-mongers.”
“We must keep Florida from becoming an abortion tourism destination,” the website said.
Fried called it electioneering.
“We're going to continue to bring light to his tactics,” she said. “And he is now underwater here in the state of Florida. His people are fed up, fed up by these tactics, and certainly fed up by the extremism that he and his fellow Republicans in the legislature have done to the state.”