Abortion rights group pays $164K settlement with Florida after petition fraud allegations

Image via AP.

The group that put an abortion rights measure on Florida’s ballot has agreed to pay a six-figure settlement over allegations of fraudulent petitions. But the state will still investigate dozens of accusations that circulators submitted forged signatures.

Floridians Protecting Freedom, the political committee behind this year’s Amendment 4, agreed to pay $164,000 to the Office of Election Crimes and Security (OECS), based on a settlement reached on Dec. 16. A memo from the Florida Department of State to Gov. Ron DeSantis, Senate President Ben Albritton and House Speaker Daniel Perez made the agreement public.

The message also says three petition circulators for the organization have been convicted for illegal activities gathering signatures, with one sentenced to years in prison.

The State Department also said many signatures that landed Amendment 4 on the statewide ballot should never have been accepted by local elections officials as valid.

“OECS has referred dozens of cases to law enforcement requesting that criminal investigations be opened,” reads the memo by Brad McVay, Deputy Secretary of State. “Additionally, OECS learned that thousands of validated petitions bear signatures that do not match any signature the elector has on file, and thus should not have been verified as valid.”

The settlement ends months of scrutiny of the organization and criticism over whether the state weaponized an elections crime police force to undermine a political measure DeSantis opposed.

Amendment 4, which would have overturned a ban on abortions six weeks into pregnancy signed by DeSantis last year, fell short in November of a 60% threshold to pass. More than 57% of voters supported the ballot measure, the highest of any statewide referendum this year that did not pass.

The Secretary of State’s Office in October released an extensive report alleging that Floridians Protecting Freedom paid out-of-state circulators with a history of submitting forged petitions.

Democratic U.S. Reps. Maxwell Frost and Debbie Wasserman Schultz earlier this year called for a federal probe into whether DeSantis abused state resources to fight the measure, including by launching the petition investigation.

“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,” the Democrats wrote in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

But the letter from McVay said the investigation, which started with a focus on non-verified petitions, revealed more significant crimes. He wrote that investigators had to identify “Floridians whose identities were stolen,” which required a review of thousands of petitions submitted by “known fraudsters” hired by Floridians Protecting Freedom.

The investigation focused on three counties: Orange, Osceola and Palm Beach. Notably, registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in all three of those counties, though Republicans hold an edge in voter registration statewide.

In Orange County, a preliminary investigation report shows more than 2,000 petitions verified by the Supervisor of Elections Office were found by the state elections force to have invalid signatures. It also found that to be the case with more than 100 Osceola signatures and 15 in Palm Beach.

The memo from McVay said Floridians Protecting Freedom used an out-of-state company, PCI Consultants, as its main contractor for petition collection. The state said the political campaign has refused to provide records pertaining to the petition gathering process, and that the use of an out-of-state firm also complicated the investigation. McVay encouraged the Legislature to consider restrictions on the use of unregistered out-of-state entities for the process.

“Unlike many other states, Florida has not imposed a residency requirement on petition circulators or made felons ineligible for paid petition circulation,” McVay wrote. “This has complicated law enforcement’s ability to detect and prosecute petition circulators’ criminal activity.”

The settlement reached between Floridians Protecting Freedom and the state puts an end to any investigation of the campaign itself by the elections police force. In turn, the political committee agreed to drop its lawsuits against the State Department and Florida Surgeon General, and said it will not pursue litigation over any allegations of interference with the campaign during the 2024 election cycle.

As part of the agreement, neither the state nor the campaign admit to any wrongdoing.

Since the end of the election, Floridians Protecting Freedom has only posted one message on social media. It included a video of Voices of Florida Executive Director Sarah Parker and referenced the petitions gathered to put Amendment 4 on the ballot.

“This is war. This is war on our reproductive freedoms,” reads a message on X.

“And not every battle lost is a war won. We did not lose tonight. We will continue to fight like hell,” Parker said. “I will be damned if we walk out of this room with a defeatist attitude. Eighty-four thousand patients depend on us. So tonight, hug your friends, hug your families, hug your loved ones, but you get out there tomorrow, and you let Florida know we had 57%.”