Florida’s Department of State is examining thousands of petition signatures that were used to get the abortion amendment on November ballots, saying it’s looking for fraud.
In a move that supporters of the amendment fear could be “political interference,” Gov. Ron DeSantis’ deputy secretary of state has asked supervisors in Hillsborough, Orange, Palm Beach and Osceola counties to gather roughly 36,000 signatures for the state to review.
The signatures were among the nearly 1 million collected — and verified by local supervisors as belonging to real Floridians — to permit Amendment 4 to appear before voters in November. The amendment would protect abortion access and undo the state’s six-week abortion ban that DeSantis championed.
Whether the request could be used to challenge the amendment or strike it from the ballot is not clear. A deadline in state law to challenge the validity of the signatures has long passed.
Defeating the amendment has become a top priority for DeSantis this fall. The governor has organized and supported one of the main groups opposing the initiative.
Two supervisors told the Times on Wednesday that the state’s inquiries were highly unusual.
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“I have never in my tenure had a request like this one,” said Osceola County Supervisor of Elections Mary Jane Arrington, a Democrat who has been in the job for 16 years.
Brad McVay, deputy secretary of state for legal affairs and elections integrity, made the requests. In phone calls and follow-up emails since late last month, he told supervisors that the office was investigating ballot petition fraud.
McVay sent supervisors lists of names of petition circulators suspected of committing fraud.
“Most of the circulators listed represent known or suspected fraudsters, several others have very concerning invalidity rates,” McVay wrote in an email that was forwarded to Hillsborough County’s elections supervisor. “We would like to review the petitions that were verified as valid submitted by these individuals.”
In Orange County, someone from the state went in person to the supervisor’s office to ask about petitions, spokesperson Christopher Heath said.
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The state in recent years has seen a surge in ballot petition fraud, in which somebody working on behalf of a campaign submits phony or fraudulent signatures. The secretary of state’s voter fraud unit, which was created in 2022, has aided in investigations that led to the arrest of two people this year on charges of forging signatures in support of Amendment 4.
The state in its most recent requests is only asking for signatures that were already deemed valid, a move that struck some supervisors as odd.
Past petition fraud cases have been built around signatures that supervisors deemed invalid or obviously fraudulent. In the 2022 effort to expand casino gaming, for example, someone fraudulently submitted the signatures of Marion County’s elections supervisor and his wife.
When asked why the state was focusing on verified signatures, Department of State spokesperson Ryan Ash did not say.
“By statute, the Department of State has an obligation to investigate credible allegations of fraudulent petitions,” Ash said in a statement.
Lauren Brenzel, campaign director for Floridians Protecting Freedom, which is leading the Amendment 4 effort, said the state already confirmed the amendment petitions early this year. Brenzel said any attempt to question the verified petitions’ validity and undermine the vote “is an attack on Floridians’ rights, their futures, and democracy at-large.”
“This is nothing more than trickery by extreme politicians who fear the will of the people,” Brenzel said in a statement.
To get an amendment on the ballot in Florida, petition collectors must get nearly 900,000 verified signatures. They must also get a required number of valid petitions in at least half of Florida’s 28 congressional districts.
Floridians Protecting Freedom surpassed that requirement and got the proper amount of signatures in 17 districts. It collected about 100,000 more valid petitions than was necessary for ballot placement, according to the Division of Election’s database.
Secretary of State Cord Byrd on Jan. 25 certified the amendment for placement on the ballot.
John Stemberger, the president of the anti-abortion Liberty Counsel Action, said that his organization didn’t find any probable cause to challenge the amendment group earlier this year when his group looked “with a fine-tooth comb” into whether petitions were incorrectly collected in some congressional districts.
Wendy Sartory Link, the elections supervisor in Palm Beach County, said the Department of State asked her office on Wednesday for more than 17,000 verified petitions.
Link, a Democrat, called the request unusual and a strain on her office as it prepares for the general election. She estimates it will take around 150 hours of work.
In his email to her office, McVay acknowledged the request was a “heavy lift.” He offered to “come back down to Palm Beach” to help “if that is the best option.”
In order to pass, Amendment 4 needs 60% of voter support. July polling from the University of North Florida said the amendment had 69% support from voters, while an August poll from Florida Atlantic University said it had 56% support.
This story was originally published September 4, 2024, 7:53 PM.
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