Fla. Law Enforcers Investigating State's Abortion Ballot Initiative

State police in Florida are showing up at the homes of voters who signed a petition to get an abortion rights amendment on the ballot in November as part of a state probe into alleged petition fraud.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has defended police visiting the homes of Floridians who signed the 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 that the probe comes long after a deadline to challenge petition signatures has passed.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a professor of constitutional and elections law at the Stetson University College of Law, said she doesn't know of a legal precedent the state could use to challenge the signatures after the deadline.

“The Florida Supreme Court already allowed the abortion question to go on the ballot in April of 2024,” Torres-Spelliscy told The Associated Press. “Thus this effort to question signatures at this point seems far too late.”

Here’s what to know about Florida’s abortion ballot initiative and the state probe into the petitions behind it.

Florida law currently bans most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before many women even know they are pregnant. If approved by 60% of voters, the ballot initiative known as Amendment 4 would ensure that abortions are legal until the fetus is viable, as determined by the patient’s health care provider.

The proposed amendment says “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” It provides for one exception, which is already in the state constitution — that parents must be notified before their minor children can get an abortion.

To qualify for the November ballot, supporters had to collect more than 891,000 petition signatures from Florida voters. In January, state elections officials confirmed the campaign had cleared that milestone, ultimately submitting more than 997,000 verified signatures — 100,000 more than they needed. That margin is far more than the 36,000 signatures state officials say they're probing as part of a broad review by the Florida Department of State to investigate alleged petition fraud.

In April, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the ballot measure would be allowed to go before voters in November, rejecting the state attorney general’s argument that the proposed amendment is deceptive and that voters won’t realize how broadly it will expand access to abortions.

According to a letter from Deputy Secretary of State Brad McVay that was shared with the AP, the state’s Office of Election Crimes and Security is “concerned” about allegations that forged signatures were submitted and then verified as valid by supervisors of elections.

Police are showing up at some voters' homes to question them about signing a petition to get the abortion initiative on the ballot. And state officials have sent requests to county-level elections supervisors to gather thousands of petition signatures for review as part of an investigation into alleged petition fraud, according to reporting by the Tampa Bay Times.

“They’re investigating this, as they should," DeSantis said Tuesday. "Our tolerance for voter fraud in the state of Florida is zero. That’s the only thing that you can do is to have zero tolerance.”