Gabrielle Russon
Florida Democrats are demanding a federal investigation as they accuse Gov. Ron DeSantis of abusing his power to fight against the abortion rights initiative in the November election.
“Governor DeSantis, who has been vocal about his opposition to Amendment 4, has leveraged his government to sabotage, suppress votes, and campaign against it,” said a letter addressed to Attorney General Merrick Garland from U.S. Reps. Maxwell Frost and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
“We urge your department to launch an investigation into the DeSantis administration’s anti-democratic actions. Floridians, including the hundreds of thousands who contributed a signature in the hopes that they could vote to restore women’s right to bodily autonomy, deserve the freedom to cast a ballot in November untainted by illegal political ploys.”
This week DeSantis claimed some of the campaign’s petitions that helped put the abortion rights initiative on the ballot are fraud.
“They had submitted petitions on behalf of dead voters. That has been substantiated,” DeSantis said Tuesday. “We now know that there are signatures that have been accepted by some of the Supervisors that don’t match the voter file, so they are investigating this, as they should.”
“Our tolerance for voter fraud in the state of Florida is zero,” he added.
DeSantis’ attacks come seven months after the petitions were validated by local and state election officials. The Amendment 4 campaign said DeSantis’ claims are politically motivated to distract from the issue of reproductive freedom and the state’s current six-week abortion ban.
The Tampa Bay Times reported that elections police are knocking on some petition-signers’ doors to investigate whether some signatures were fraudulent.
“Many Floridians who signed the petition have reported that police have come to their house, some with copies of their birth certificates and other official documents related to them, to verify their signature,” the Florida Democrats wrote to Garland.
“Residents say that these encounters left them feeling ‘shaken’ and ‘intimidated.’ Election supervisors for the regions these reports originated from were not notified police were knocking doors. A supervisor from an impacted district expressed confusion as to how houses were selected, given the request his office received from the administration was for a single signature.”
DeSantis’ Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
To read the full letter, go here.
6 comments
Michael K
September 12, 2024 at 3:07 pm
Republicans have a woman problem. They are terrified of women showing up to vote – and absolutely unwilling to let women make their own health care decisions. People like our current governor need to stop thwarting the will of the people. Ron has been a DeSaster for Florida.
Pastor Pasta
September 12, 2024 at 4:59 pm
These are authoritarian tactics, just like the 20 middle of the night raids against black folks in the 2022 election season for “illegally voting” after being issued voter registration cards. They are meant to intimidate the voter, there is no other logical explanation. This man is unhinged and doesn’t believe in democracy or freedom. He’s a little bully. Hope the DOJ gets involved, these tactics are disgusting.
Jojo
September 13, 2024 at 8:06 am
Welcome to the fascist state of Florida.
It’s clear that Desantis is furious that this amendment is likely to pass and is pulling out all the nasty tools to try to defeat it.
Sorry Ronny- the people spoke when over 130k voters signed the petition and they will speak when the amendment is overwhelmingly passed
Tom
September 13, 2024 at 4:26 pm
I must say that I’m enjoying watching him squirm. He’s so used to playing “rhonda say’s” and now, we the people, get to make that choice and even trumpelstiltskin has undermined him with his bold faced pandering. Since he lost so badly in the primaries, I guess nobody cares what he thinks anymore. Schadenfreude is the right answer sometimes – this is one of them.
FLPatriot
September 16, 2024 at 9:42 am
DeSantis’ whole run for POTUS next time rides on this abortion amendment. He NEEDS to win so he can go around claiming how he and he alone can spread the right wing extremism across the US. VOTE YES ON #3
FLPatriot
September 16, 2024 at 9:42 am
4…SORRY
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