Florida Voters Say Police Are Harassing Them for Supporting Abortion Amendment

In a new report in the Tampa Bay Times, Florida voters say the state’s election police officers are showing up at their doors and asking them about their support for Amendment 4, a ballot measure to repeal the state’s six-week abortion ban and enshrine a right to abortion in the state Constitution. In one case, a Lee County resident named Isaac Menasche told the Times that a plain-clothes officer recently came to his home and asked twice if it was really him who signed the petition in support of Amendment 4. 

Menasche posted on Facebook that it was “obvious to me that a significant effort was exerted to determine if indeed I had signed the petition.” He also told the Times that the officer who came to his home had a copy of his driver’s license and other personal government documents.

Another Lee County voter, Becky Castellanos, said a plain-clothes election police officer came to her home asking to see one of her family members, saying they could be a victim of fraud. After she invited the officer in, he spoke on the phone with her relative about whether they’d signed the petition for Amendment 4; the family member affirmed that they had. Both Menasche and Castellanos expressed unease about being spontaneously approached by law enforcement officers at their homes—specifically, over their political positions.

The Lee County Supervisor of Elections Office told the Times they’d only received one request from the state to check that a voter’s signed petition was real, prompting supervisor Tommy Doyle to express confusion about why officers were showing up at multiple voters’ doors.

The visits come as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) continues to vehemently, publicly oppose Amendment 4. Typically, the state only inspects petitions that have been deemed fraudulent—not petitions that were already verified. But DeSantis recently mandated a government inspection of thousands of Amendment 4 petitions that have already been validated. The Times reports that DeSantis’ secretary of state ordered supervisors in at least four counties to send 36,000 such valid petitions for inspection, which one 16-year state supervisor called unprecedented. 

The only purpose of Gov. DeSantis’ election police is voter suppression and intimidation. https://t.co/VLgi73czTu

— ACLU of Florida (@ACLUFL) September 9, 2024

Abortion rights advocates and legal experts have expressed concern with the extent to which DeSantis and his administration seem to be wielding government authority to fight the amendment. Last week, DeSantis’ Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) launched a web page with the specific purpose of spreading disinformation about the measure; Jason Weida, secretary of the agency, tweeted that the website would “combat the lies and disinformation surrounding Florida’s abortion laws.” Instead, the website lies that current Florida law “protects women” while Amendment 4 “threatens women’s safety.” Polling from the last several weeks shows strong support for Amendment 4, ranging from 55 to 69% of voters, though the ballot measure will need at least 60% of the vote to succeed under Florida law.

Disinformation and intimidation from anti-abortion activists are a recurring theme targeting abortion rights ballot measures this election cycle. For example, in Arkansas in May, the Arkansas Family Council doxxed Arkansans for Limited Government organizers, sharing their names and hometowns and accusing them of supporting infanticide. In South Dakota, anti-abortion activists posed as government officials and pressured voters to redact their signatures. In Nebraska, anti-abortion organizers lied to voters that their anti-abortion measure was “pro-choice,” prompting hundreds to file affidavits to try to withdraw their signatures; the measure successfully made it onto the ballot, but it’s unclear how many of its signatures were collected under false pretenses.

On a Monday morning press call, Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried accused DeSantis of “harassing local supervisors” and using the police to “intimidate abortion petition signers.” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) called the report a “police intimidation tactic that’s clearly intended to chill the democratic process,” adding that it raises “federal civil rights concerns.” She continued, “If Republicans can’t win in the court of opinion or in the ballot booth, they stoop to police threats to stand in the way of women and their doctors making health care decisions.”