Gabrielle Russon
A new lawsuit filed by anti-abortion rights advocates wants to cancel this November’s vote on whether to enshrine abortion rights protections in the state constitution because of “widespread voter fraud.”
“When all fictitious, forged, illegally obtained, or otherwise invalid signatures are removed from consideration, Amendment 4 failed to reach the constitutionally required number of signatures for ballot placement,” the lawsuit said, asking for the votes not to be counted in the Nov. 5 election.
St. Lucie County residents Hope Hoffman and Terri Kellogg, as well as Taylor County residents Chelsey Davis and Lorien Hershberger, are represented by former Florida Supreme Court Justice Alan Lawson on the complaint, filed less than three weeks before the election.
Floridians Protecting Freedom (FPF), the political committee supporting Amendment 4, has denied wrongdoing and argued the petitions used to get placement on the Nov. 5 ballot were already validated by Elections Supervisors and Florida’s Department of State. They accuse Gov. Ron DeSantis of deploying state taxpayer resources to fight abortion because he is personally against it.
“These lawsuits, coming on the heels of the State of Florida’s latest attempt to undermine Floridians’ right to vote on Amendment 4, are desperate,” Lauren Brenzel, Campaign Director for Yes on 4, said in a statement Thursday. “Ask yourself, why is this happening now, over half a year after over 997,000 petitions were verified by the state of Florida and with less than a month until the election these anti-abortion extremists want to relitigate the petition collection process? Simply put, it’s because our campaign is winning and the government and its extremist allies are trying to do everything they can to stop Floridians from having the rights they deserve.”
The new 388-page lawsuit is centered around a DeSantis administration report released last week that alleges FPF illegally paid circulators based on the number of signatures collected.
“The report also includes sweeping generalizations about the petition drive without providing data to back them up,” the Tampa Bay Times reported.
The Orange County lawsuit comes one day after FPF sued a pair of Health Department officials for threatening TV stations that are playing Amendment 4 advertisements.
Amendment 4 seeks to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. Currently, Florida bans abortions after six weeks in most cases. To pass, it needs at least 60% of the vote.
16 comments
Ron Ogden
October 17, 2024 at 9:09 am
From the lawsuit: ” 69. Over the past 24months, according to campaign finance records, FPF has paid PCI more than $27 million for petition initiative efforts. 70. PCIs practice is to pay petition circulators per signature. See, e.g., John Ryan Paying for signatures used to be illegal. Now it’s making this Californian rich, NPR (Aug. 13, 2016) available athttps://bitly/3TAXF0f. On information and belief, PCI incentivized its petition circulator’s signature-collecting efforts in Florida by hiring contractors that paid per signature or were paid per signature. They did this even though it is a third-degree felony to pay petition circulators based on the number of signatures he or she collects. § 104.186, Fla. Stat.”
“Res ipsa loquitur”, as the lawyers say. The thing speaks for itself (even though the phrase relates particularly to civil negligence). In this case it is patently obvious that if the records are correct the organization paying for signatures broke the law and rendered the petitions invalid and, consequently, the amendment invalid. I hope the court rules quickly, so we do not have to waste any more time on this evil-intended ballot measure.
Michael
October 17, 2024 at 10:22 am
“ PCIs practice is to pay petition circulators per signature.”
You are as bad an attorney as Rudy Giuliani. You can’t assert something as fact in a complaint unless the complaint also contains the evidence to support it. Fortunately, the Deputy Secretary is not as dumb to do that. Rather, he states ‘received allegations’ of such. And we all know how many ‘allegations’ were made after the 2020 election and to date how many ‘allegations’ survived the court proceedings? Let me help you….zero.
‘if the records are correct’…….you have no records, cousin Vinnie. You only have allegations. a business in one state is not required to respond to a subpoena from another state. A litigant must file with the court in the state where the third party is located to issue a subpoena.
Billy Rotberg
October 17, 2024 at 5:13 pm
Out of state organizations are not permitted to contribute one cent to help a Florida petition drive. Your name calling is childish.
Cheesy Floridian
October 17, 2024 at 5:49 pm
DIdn’t out of state people donate to DeSantis drive to stop this ballot?
Jack Olin
October 18, 2024 at 12:47 am
have you ever heard of the first amendment? or Citizens United? who says out of state organizations can’t contribute in Florida?
The House voted 77-39 to approve a campaign finance bill that includes placing a $3,000 limit on contributions from out-of-state donors to political committees trying to collect enough petition signatures to move forward with citizens’ initiatives.
you said not one cent. now I don’t know if that bill became a law as a previous one was thrown out for violating the first amendment but I can find no such law on the books.
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October 17, 2024 at 11:30 am
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Billy Rotberg
October 17, 2024 at 4:55 pm
The entire ballot initiative process has been corrupted with out of state money and pay per signature tactics dating back to the failed so called ban assault weapons petition drive in 2019. Amendments need 65% to pass if there’s any taxation involved. So if weed doesn’t get 65%, it would require the legislative branch to approve.
Michael K
October 17, 2024 at 9:10 am
The only fraud being perpetrated comes from our governor, who thinks only he knows bestm, and refuses to accept the will of the people.
A day without Libturds
October 17, 2024 at 3:29 pm
He won by almost 20%. Crying will not help, snowflake shit eater.
Cheesy Floridian
October 17, 2024 at 5:49 pm
Do some research oh that. He won because of his covid policies, a weak democratic candidate Charlie Crist and Democrats didn’t come out to vote!!!!
cassandra was right
October 18, 2024 at 3:31 pm
And after voters saw Desantis’ 6 week abortion ban, Nikki Haley beat Ron in the Florida primary! Imagine how bad he’d lose today!
FREEDOM! DEMOCRACY!
YES on 4!
Linwood Wright
October 17, 2024 at 5:07 pm
How about no? How about we let the people decide on this?
The abortion ban is disgusting and cruel. I know of at least two women who would have been dead if this law was in place when they had miscarriages.
Cheesy Floridian
October 17, 2024 at 5:51 pm
Yes thank you!
Cheesy Floridian
October 17, 2024 at 5:50 pm
Vote yes on 4!! Support freedom! Support choice!! Don’t give into want DeSantis wants. This is crazy! The people of Florida deserve better.
cassandra was right
October 18, 2024 at 5:01 pm
ALL the signatures were verified and validated. The deadline has passed.
It is absolutely none of DeSantis’ business what is going on inside someone else’s body. Women’s bodies are not state property!
YES on 4!
MarvinM
October 18, 2024 at 9:46 pm
DeSantis’ Election Police only looked at 13,445 petitions out of 997,035 validated petitions – that’s 1.35%.
They only looked at petitions in three out of 67 counties – that’s 4.7%.
In two of the three counties they only looked at petitions submitted by known or suspected fraudsters (KSF).
Then they used that data to do some creative math that they then applied to only six districts – those that had the smallest percentage of votes over the threshold needed to put it on the ballot. Those ranged from District 9 (only 9.6% over) to District 23 (20.5% over).
I don’t think any judge is going accede to their wishes of taking Amendment 4 off the ballot or ordering that the state not consider the vote on 4 valid based on the tiny sample and sketchy application of the derived data in this document.
It’s just 388 pages of 11th hour desperation.
YES on 4.
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