Less than eight weeks before Floridians will vote on an abortion-rights amendment to the state Constitution, a bitter standoff is escalating between Gov. Ron DeSantis and the amendment’s backers over whether a string of state actions directed at the measure amount to a taxpayer-funded effort to defeat it at the polls.
The debate first erupted last week after the state Agency for Health Care Administration posted a 30-second video on social media that casts current Florida law — which bans almost all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy — as proof that “Florida cares about women and families.” The post links to an agency website that claims that the abortion rights measure, known as Amendment 4, “threatens women’s safety.” It adds: “Don’t let the fear-mongers lie to you.”
At the same time, state criminal investigators were revealed to be belatedly examining whether some of nearly 911,000 signatures collected to place the measure on the November ballot might be fraudulent. State officials certified the signatures in February, and the deadline for challenging them has passed.
This week, the state health care agency has begun airing its social-media video as a commercial on Florida television, although the extent and cost of the ad campaign remains unclear. The agency’s media office did not address questions about the campaign, referring instead to a statement by a DeSantis official about the value of public-service announcements.
On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, said it was preparing to file a lawsuit in state court on behalf of Floridians Protecting Freedom, which is campaigning for the amendment. . The A.C.L.U. said the suit would allege that the agency is illegally spending taxpayer dollars on a political campaign against the measure.
“The government is trying every dirty trick they can to distract Floridians,” Lauren Brenzel, the campaign director at Floridians Protecting Freedom, said on Tuesday at a news conference. “They’re doing everything they can to suppress the votes and the will of the people.”
Mr. DeSantis has brushed aside the complaints, saying the agency’s website and video amounted to “public service announcements” and that the signatures investigation was based on actual evidence of fraud.
On Thursday, Florida’s Democratic congressional delegation asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to open an inquiry into Mr. DeSantis’s actions, saying they “constitute an abuse of official resources to intimidate and unsettle voters out of voting for Amendment 4.”
The battle evokes past episodes in which Florida state agencies or institutions have taken particularly aggressive actions to pursue policy goals favored by the governor or to punish his detractors.
In 2022, for example, Mr. DeSantis ordered the State Legislature to abolish a special taxing district, stripping the Walt Disney Company of benefits, after the company opposed state legislation banning classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity.
The governor issued executive orders in 2022 and 2023 suspending elected Democratic prosecutors from office in the metropolitan Orlando and Tampa areas, claiming that the prosecutors were soft on crime. The state Supreme Court, where Mr. DeSantis has appointed five of the seven justices, said in June that it would not overturn the suspensions because they were political acts outside its authority.
Mr. DeSantis fiercely opposes Amendment 4, which would ensure the right to an abortion in Florida until a fetus is viable. The nearly 911,000 certified signatures on petitions supporting the measure were close to 20,000 more than the law required.
The signatures inquiry, which was first reported by The Tampa Bay Times, has simmered since at least last summer. Critics claim that it is unfolding now, in the run-up to Election Day, in order to cast a shadow on the multimillion-dollar campaign to pass Amendment 4.
State investigators have visited at least a few petition signers personally, including Isaac Menasche, 71, a retired lawyer in Fort Myers. He said in an interview that a plainclothes officer with a badge came to his door and told him his signature on a petition did not match the signature on his driver’s license.
Separately, Mr. Menasche wrote last week on Facebook that he had, in fact, signed an Amendment 4 petition. He said he was “shaken” because the investigator had about 10 pages of his personal information, including a copy of his driver’s license.
“Troubling that so much resources were devoted to this,” he wrote. “I wonder if the same could be said if the petition were for some innocuous issue.”
The investigation was begun by an election crimes office in the state Department of State — a unit set up by Mr. DeSantis in 2022 — after a county election official called attention to several Amendment 4 petitions that were said to bear the signatures of dead people. Three people were arrested earlier this year on charges of falsifying signatures on petitions for Amendment 4.
In a July letter, the Department of State recommended opening a criminal inquiry. It cited 35 people, apparently workers for a company hired to collect petition signatures, who had gathered some 37,000 signatures.
The letter expressed concern “that a substantial number of voter signature forgeries were submitted by Floridians Protecting Freedom Inc. and were verified as valid” by county elections officials.
On Monday, Mr. DeSantis allowed that some of the petition signatures his election police were investigating could be legitimate.
“It may be that the signature is totally different, and that voter will say, ‘No, I actually did do that,’” he said. “And if that’s what you say, I think that’s probably the end of it.”
In order to become part of the State Constitution, Amendment 4 would require approval by at least 60 percent of voters in November, a high bar for ballot measures to clear. Recent polls have differed on whether it has enough support to pass.
Soon after the state Supreme Court ruled in April that the amendment could appear on the ballot, Mr. DeSantis established a political action committee, the Florida Freedom Fund, to oppose it. Then Republican leaders in the State Legislature intervened in the drafting of a fiscal impact statement that must appear alongside the proposal.
The final version of the statement says that the financial impact of the amendment is “indeterminate,” but only after a stream of warnings that the measure might reduce live births, slow the state’s growth, cut government revenues and raise litigation costs.
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