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RON DESANTIS ACCUSED OF ‘INTIMIDATION CAMPAIGN’ AGAINST ABORTION
RIGHTS  
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Joseph Contreras
September 29, 2024
Guardian
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_ Florida voters report law enforcement personnel visits that appear
to be part of drive to block passage of Amendment 4 _

"Ron DeSantis", by Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0)

 

Ron DeSantis is making a concerted effort to maintain draconian limits
on abortion access in Florida that have led to accusations the
rightwing Republican governor is conducting a “state-sponsored
intimidation campaign” against abortion rights and trampling on
civil liberties in the state.

A near total ban on abortions after the first six weeks of pregnancy
took effect in Florida
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supreme court ruled that the right to an abortion was no longer
covered by the privacy clause in the Florida constitution.

Passage of legislation called Amendment 4 would change the state
constitution to prohibit government interference with the right to an
abortion before the viability of a fetus, which typically begins
around the 24th week of a pregnancy.

To bolster his case against the pro-choice amendment proposal,
DeSantis has even questioned the legitimacy of passing laws through
popular referendums, even though that mechanism is authorized by the
state constitution.

“It takes power away from the people to be able to decide this
through elections and who they elect to office and who legislates,”
he told a press conference recently. “It effectively puts it in the
courts, and there will be 25 years’ worth of lawsuits on what any of
these terms mean.”

In a letter dated 25 January of this year, the Florida department of
state’s division of elections confirmed that the six organizations
in support of the pro-choice referendum had collected enough valid
signatures to qualify the proposed constitutional amendment for the
November ballot.

Six months later, however, a deputy secretary of that same state
government department revealed in a letter that his office had
received “alarming information” from the Palm Beach county
supervisor of elections office about “fraudulent constitutional
initiative petitions” that were submitted by 35 individuals who had
been hired to collect signatures on behalf of Amendment 4.

This apparent attempt to reopen the signature validity issue was
replicated in three other counties in Florida, and as of two weeks ago
an estimated 36,000 signatures are currently under review by an
election fraud unit that was established by legislation that DeSantis
signed into law two years ago.

The Palm Beach county supervisor of elections, Wendy Sartory Link,
received an email four weeks ago from that deputy secretary of state,
Brad McVay, asking her office to review 17,637 petition forms that
were certified as valid by her office last winter.

The elections supervisor said the request from McVay was “not a
common practice” that she had encountered in the five years since
she was appointed to the position by DeSantis. Link is running for
re-election this year as a Democrat, and she suggested that the entire
exercise might be an academic one at this juncture.

“It doesn’t really apply to us,” she said. “The initiative was
certified, and it’s on our ballots.”

_Joseph Contreras
[[link removed]] is a journalist
based in Miami, Florida_

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* abortion
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* Reproductive rights
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* Ron DeSantis
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* Florida
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