ACLU responds to Florida’s Amendment 4 petition investigation
TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — The ACLU of Florida says Floridians Protecting Freedom collected more than a million Amendment 4 petitions and sorted out questionable ones from the final count that was verified by elections officials.
Communications Strategist Keisha Mulfort said the group is still required to hand over all petitions, which includes questionable ones.
“If you receive a petition, you are still required to turn that over to the SOE,” Mulfort said. “We also flagged the petitions that we had concerns about.”
In total, the state shows under a million petitions were verified, which is more than what was required to get on the ballot.
Earlier this week, Gov. Ron DeSantis defended his administration’s investigation into signed Amendment 4 petitions along with sending a unit created by the governor to investigate elections to verify signatures.
The governor blames the sponsor of the amendment: Floridians Protecting Freedom.
“This group submitted dozens of petitions on behalf of dead people,” DeSantis said. “There are other petitions that have been validated where the signatures do not match the voter files.”
The Department of State sent an example of four petitions it had sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Story continues below
The department said two were signed by people who are dead and the other two were from voters who never actually signed the petitions. It’s unclear if the state has documents of other petitions it has sent to the state.
The Department of State also said 35 people are accused of committing fraud by submitting petition forms on behalf of victims who deny submitting those forms or on behalf of deceased individuals, submitted nearly 37,000 petitions statewide. The state went on to say of those nearly 37,000 petitions submitted by these 35 circulators, supervisors marked 23,018 as valid. In an email, a spokesperson for the department then said the remaining 13,982 were invalidated by the SOE’s office.
“If someone is committing fraud, that undermines your rights as law abiding citizens,” the governor said.
Political Expert Tara Newsom, with St. Petersburg College, believes the governor may have gone a step too far with this investigation, especially since he is widely known for opposing Amendment 4.
“It’s unprecedented,” Newsom said. “We’ve never seen this kind of voter interference, voter suppression, and voter intimidation.”
The ACLU of Florida is also suing the state after the state’s health agency created a website urging voters to help defeat the citizen-led amendment.
US Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Tampa) and other members of Florida’s democratic delegation wrote a joint letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland asking him to investigate the DeSantis Administration’s efforts investigating petitions.
“We request that you investigate the Florida government’s recent abuses related to Amendment 4, the Right to Abortion Initiative, which would restore the right to an abortion up to viability,” the letter reads. “Governor DeSantis, who has been vocal about his opposition to Amendment 4, has leveraged his government to sabotage, suppress votes, and campaign against it.”
The letter accuses DeSantis of undermining the rights of Floridians.
“Several months after the deadline to challenge the validity of petition signatures, the DeSantis administration has ordered state officials to produce thousands of signatures related to the Amendment 4 petition spread across five Florida counties, offering little insight into its reasoning,” the letter reads.
Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WFLA.