Fraud prevention or dirty tricks? Florida abortion amendment might be under attack again | Opinion

With weeks before Florida voters start casting mail and early ballots in the fall elections, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration has pulled an unprecedented move that appears intent to undermine a proposed constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights.

Florida’s Department of State has sent requests to supervisors of elections in four large counties to examine 36,000 petition signatures that were used to get Amendment 4 on the Nov. 5 ballot. If approved by at least 60% of voters, the measure will restore the right to an abortion up to viability, normally around 24 weeks, which was the standard before DeSantis signed a 15-week and, then, an extreme six-week ban.

DeSantis’ deputy secretary of state Brad Mcvay sent a list of names to election supervisors of petition circulators suspected of fraud. McVay told Hillsborough County’s supervisor that the state wants to review petitions that were submitted by those individuals, even though the signatures were already deemed valid, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

It’s unclear why the state is targeting only Amendment 4, or whether this could be used to strike it from the ballot.

A deadline to question the validity of the signatures has long passed under state law. Even one of the organizations opposing the amendment told the Times that it didn’t find anything when it looked “with a fine-tooth comb” earlier this year into whether the signatures were incorrectly gathered.

To give the DeSantis administration the benefit of the doubt: It’s important to root out any suspicion of fraud — and two people were arrested this year for forging petition signatures in support of Amendment 4.

But the latest request from the state is highly unusual so close to an election. DeSantis is leading the campaign against the amendment, which, according to a July poll, has a good chance of approval.

The four counties targeted — Orange, Hillsborough, Osceola and Palm Beach — lean Democratic. Osceola Supervisor of Elections Mary Jane Arrington told the Times she’s never seen “a request like this one.”

It’s understandable that Floridians Protecting Freedom, the organization that sponsored Amendment 4 — surpassing the required 900,000 valid petition signatures by 100,000 — believes this is part of the state’s continuing efforts to prevent voters from deciding on abortion rights.

“Our petitions were validated over the course of eight months by hand by the supervisors of elections,” Lauren Brenzel, campaign director for Floridians Protecting Freedom, told the Herald Editorial Board.

“It’s incredibly disturbing to see attempts to intervene with that process at the 11th hour.”

Earlier this year, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody tried to convince the state Supreme Court, albeit unsuccessfully, to ban Amendment 4 from the ballot, arguing the measure was worded too vaguely.

Then, a state panel made up mostly by Republican appointees, approved a loaded financial impact statement that will appear on the ballot next to Amendment 4 that deviates from the norm by including the cost of litigation of hypothetical lawsuits related to the amendment. The state’s longtime top economist Amy Baker told her colleagues at the Financial Impact Estimating Conference the statement strayed from neutrality, but she was outvoted 3-1.

DeSantis and his allies have also tried to scare voters, claiming Amendment 4 would allow “abortions up to the time of birth.” The measure would only allow abortions after viability “when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”

Fewer than 1% of abortions in the U.S. happened at or after 21 weeks in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those procedures can cost upwards of $30,000, according to KFF Health News, and are performed by very few specialized doctors on women facing harrowing circumstances such as fatal fetal abnormalities or extreme health risks, Brenzel said.

If Florida’s state government is truly interested in investigating ballot petition fraud, so be it. But the state has a poor track record of meddling with efforts to restore abortion rights. There’s little trust that this latest move isn’t yet another effort to silence the voice of voters on reproductive rights.

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