"Threatening to cancel votes": Florida officials allege fraud to kneecap abortion rights amendment

In a last-minute effort to kill a proposed ballot amendment that would restore abortion rights in Florida, state officials are accusing a group that gathered signatures to get the amendment on this year's ballot fraud.

Florida Deputy Secretary of State Brad McVay claimed in a 348-page report released on Friday night that Floridians Protecting Freedom paid out-of-state petition circulators to harvest fraudulent signatures. That group that gathered nearly 1 million signatures for the abortion rights effort. The report alleges the Department of State has been flooded with complaints about potential fraud, and that it had opened over 100 criminal investigations.

“The allegations included reports of paid FPF petition circulators signing petitions on behalf of deceased individuals, forging or misrepresenting elector signatures of petitions, using electors’ personal identifying information without consent, and perjury/false swearing,” the report claims, noting that “more than 20” of the 911,000 signatures were from now-deceased Floridians.

Florida law allows voters to add amendments to the state constitution directly, if 60% of voters agree with a given proposal. Though the election is just three weeks away and ballots have been printed, challenges to the amendment could invalidate votes cast for the initiative.

Governor Ron DeSantis’ administration has worked hard to kneecap the rights-restoring proposal, reportedly sending state troopers to interrogate petition signers and threatening to prosecute television stations that run ads supporting the measure. On Thursday, state's Supreme Court ruled DeSantis was not abusing his powers in his attacks on the amendment.

Florida Democrats warn that the report is just another tactic aimed at killing the effort to repeal the state's DeSantis-enacted six-week abortion ban.

“DeSantis is so obsessed w/ending reproductive freedom in FL that he has weaponized every state agency against us, is spending PUBLIC $ to campaign against [the ballot initiative] & now — while we’re recovering from a hurricane — releasing late night reports, threatening to cancel our votes,” Democratic state Representative Anna V. Eskamani wrote in a post to X.