TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — State Police in Florida are appearing in the homes of voters who signed a petition calling for a abortion As part of the government’s investigation into alleged petition fraud, an amendment addressing the civil rights movement will be put to a vote in November.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis defended the police visits to Florida residents who signed the petition. Critics say the investigation is a brazen attempt to intimidate voters in the nation’s third-largest state and prevent them from protecting abortion access – and the investigation comes long after a Deadline to challenge petition signatures has expired.
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a professor of constitutional and election law at Stetson University College of Law, said she was unaware of any precedent the state could rely on to challenge the signatures after the deadline.
“The Supreme Court of Florida “The administration has already allowed the abortion issue to go to the ballot in April 2024,” Torres-Spelliscy told the Associated Press. “So this attempt to challenge the signatures at this point seems far too late.”
Here you can find out everything you need to know about the abortion initiative in Florida and the state investigation into the petitions behind it.
What impact would the abortion change have in Florida?
Florida law currently prohibits most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy before many women even know they are pregnant. If 60% of voters agree, People’s initiative Known as Amendment 4, it would ensure that abortions are legal until the fetus is determined to be viable by the patient’s doctor.
The proposed amendment states: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict an abortion before it is available or when it is necessary to protect the health of the patient, as determined by the patient’s physician.” It creates an exception already enshrined in the state constitution: parents must be notified before their minor children can obtain an abortion.
How did activists manage to get the amendment on the ballot?
To qualify for the November ballot, supporters had to collect more than 891,000 signatures from Florida voters. In January, state election officials confirmed The campaign had reached this milestone and handed over more than 997,000 verified signatures – 100,000 more than they needed. This margin is far more than the 36,000 signatures State officials said the investigation is part of a comprehensive review by the Florida Department of State to investigate suspected petition fraud.
In April, the Florida Supreme Court ruled governed that the ballot bill would be presented to voters in November and rejected the Attorney General Arguing that the proposed amendment was misleading and that voters would not realize the extent to which it would expand access to abortion.
Why do state officials investigate the petitions?
According to a letter from Deputy Secretary of State Brad McVay obtained by the AP, the state’s Office of Election Crime and Security is “concerned” about allegations that forged signatures were submitted and subsequently certified as valid by election officials.
Police are showing up at some voters’ homes to question them about whether they signed a petition seeking to put the abortion initiative on the ballot. And state officials have asked county election officials to collect thousands of petition signatures to verify as part of an investigation into alleged petition fraud, according to a report by the Tampa Bay Times.
DeSantis defended the investigation, saying police had found evidence that some of the alleged voter signatures came from dead people.
“They are investigating this, as they should,” DeSantis said Tuesday. “Our tolerance for voter fraud in the state of Florida is zero. The only thing you can do is have zero tolerance.”
Election fraud is extremely raretypically occurs in isolated cases and is generally recognized. AP investigation The 2020 presidential election identified fewer than 475 possible cases of voter fraud out of 25.5 million votes cast in the six states where former President Donald Trump and his allies contested his defeat by Democratic President Joe Biden.
What is the Florida Election Police?
DeSantis signed a law in 2022 that establish a police force Prosecuting voter fraud and other election crimes has become one of Republicans’ top priorities after Trump falsely claimed his re-election was stolen.
The Office of Election Crimes and Security investigates allegations of fraud, conducts preliminary investigations, and may refer cases to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
In 2022, the state announced Criminal charges against 20 people for illegal voting in 2020, as a prelude to the new Election Crimes Unit. All of the people had been convicted of previous crimes that made them ineligible to vote, but all had received a voter ID from the state, according to a report by the Tampa Bay Times.
There are more than 13.6 million active registered voters in Florida.
Could the amendment be removed from the vote?
Supporters of the amendment have called the investigation “political interference” and fear it is a late-stage attempt to remove the amendment from the vote.
Torres-Spelliscy, a law professor at Stetson University, told AP there is no precedent for the state removing the amendment from the ballot so late in the process. Local election officials have said they have already begun sending the wording of their ballot to the printer.
Torres-Spelliscy referred to an earlier decision by the state Supreme Court to keep a constitutional amendment on the ballot. The ruling came just a few days before the 2016 election. The court rejected a motion to invalidate the solar energy ballot initiative, which was Amendment 1although media reported a month before the election that industry insiders had drafted the measure to mislead voters.
“Like the U.S. Supreme Court, the Florida Supreme Court has not followed its own precedents recently,” Torres-Spelliscy said. “But if they have been faithful to previous precedents, including keeping Amendment 1 on the ballot in 2016, then the Florida Supreme Court should also keep Amendment 4 on the ballot in 2024.”
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Associated Press writer Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee contributed to this report.
___ Kate Payne is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-reported issues.
