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 in May after the state 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 is a journalist based in Miami, Florida
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