Police are questioning Florida voters about signing an abortion rights ballot petition

State police are showing up at Florida voters’ homes to question them about signing a petition to get an abortion rights amendment on the ballot in November, and a state health care agency has launched a website targeting the ballot initiative with politically charged language.

Critics say they're the latest efforts by Florida's Republican elected officials to leverage state resources to try to block the abortion rights measure, moves which some Democratic officials argue could violate state laws against voter intimidation.

“Ron (DeSantis) has repeatedly used state power to interfere with a citizen-led process to get reproductive freedom on the ballot," Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried told reporters on Monday. “This is their latest desperate attempt before Election Day.”

The ballot initiative known as Amendment 4 would enshrine abortion rights in Florida law. If approved by 60% of voters, the procedure would remain legal until the fetus is viable, as determined by the patient’s health care provider.

Isaac Menasche, one of nearly a million people who signed the petition to get the measure on the ballot, said a law enforcement officer knocked on his door last week in Lee County in southwest Florida to ask him about signing it.

The officer said the questioning was part of an investigation into alleged petition fraud, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

“I’m not a person who is going out there protesting for abortion,” Menasche told the newspaper. “I just felt strongly, and I took the opportunity when the person asked me to say, ‘Yeah, I’ll sign that petition.’”

Critics say the investigation is a brazen attempt to intimidate voters in the country’s third-largest state from protecting access to abortion — and the latest in a series of efforts by the governor's administration to target Amendment 4.

“Amendment 4 was placed on the ballot by nearly one million Floridians around the state and across party lines who believe that people, not politicians, deserve the freedom to make their own health care decisions," Lauren Brenzel, the director of the Yes on 4 campaign, said in an email. "But the State will stop at nothing to keep in place their near-total abortion ban."

Florida law currently bans most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before many women even know they are pregnant.

Speaking at a press event Monday in South Florida, DeSantis defended police visiting the homes of petition signers, and a separate move by a state health care agency to create a website targeting the ballot amendment, saying both are aimed at making sure November’s vote is fair.

DeSantis signed a law in 2022 creating a state police force dedicated to investigating voter fraud and elections crimes. Voter fraud is rare, typically occurs in isolated instances and is generally detected.

He said elections police are going to the homes of people who signed the petitions that got Amendment 4 on the ballot not to intimidate them, but because questions have been raised about the legitimacy of the signatures. He said the police have found evidence that some of the supposed signatures were from dead people.

“Anyone who submitted a petition that is a valid voter, that is totally within their rights to do it," DeSantis said. “We are not investigating that. What they are investigating is fraudulent petitions. We know that this group did submit on behalf of dead people.”

A deadline in state law to challenge the validity of the signatures has long passed, but county-level election administrators across Florida say they have been receiving requests from state officials to turn over verified petition signatures as part of a state probe.

Mary Jane Arrington, a Democrat who has served as the Supervisor of Elections in Osceola County in central Florida for 16 years, told The Associated Press she had never received a request like this one before.

Arrington said she didn’t know what to make of the state’s request to review signatures her office had already verified.

“These are ones that we deemed the petition valid, both in completeness and in their signature matching what we had on file for the voter,” Arrington said. “They said they were investigating … signature petition fraud.”

The state’s elections crime unit has opened more than 40 investigations into paid petition gathers working for the Amendment 4 campaign, according to a letter from Deputy Secretary of State Brad McVay outlining allegedly fraudulent petitions in Palm Beach County that was shared with the AP.

Judges have tossed out previous criminal cases brought by the controversial Office of Election Crimes and Security.

Meanwhile, a state health care agency launched a new website last week targeting Amendment 4, with a landing page proclaiming that “Florida is Protecting Life” and warning “Don’t let the fearmongers lie to you."

DeSantis said the page created by Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration is being paid through a budget the department has to do public service announcements. He said the page is not political but is giving Floridians “factual information” about the amendment.

“Everything that is put out is factual. It is not electioneering," DeSantis said at the news conference, adding, “I am glad they are doing it.”

Florida is one of nine states where measures to protect abortion access have qualified to go before voters in 2024.

Florida Republicans have been using various other strategies to thwart the state abortion ballot measure. Republican Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody attempted to use the state Supreme Court to keep abortion off the ballot. Later, abortion rights advocates criticized a financial impact statement meant to be placed on the ballot beside the proposed amendment as an attempt to mislead voters. The state Supreme Court ruled in August to allow the language to remain on the ballot.

Meanwhile, anti-abortion groups and GOP allies across the country are using an array of strategies to counter proposed ballot initiatives aiming to protect reproductive rights. These tactics have included legislative pushes for competing ballot measures that could confuse voters and monthslong delays caused by lawsuits over ballot initiative language.

Nebraskans, for example, are awaiting rulings from the state Supreme Court on three lawsuits aimed at keeping abortion off the ballot. And the Missouri Supreme Court is set to hear arguments Tuesday in an appeal of a lower court ruling that an abortion rights campaign did not meet legal requirements to qualify for the November ballot. ___

This story was first published on Sep. 9, 2024. It was updated on Sep. 10, 2024 to correct that the letter outlining allegedly fraudulent petitions was about Palm Beach County, not to Palm Beach County.

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Associated Press writers Christine Fernando in Chicago, Geoff Mulvihill in Philadelphia, and Terry Spencer in Fort Lauderdale 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 undercovered issues.