Florida Republicans couldn’t keep an abortion amendment off the ballot — they lost that fight in the State Supreme Court in April. So Gov. Ron DeSantis is using other means to dissuade people from voting yes on Amendment 4, which would allow abortion until fetal viability (typically around 24 weeks). The state’s current law, passed by the Florida Legislature in April 2023, bans abortion after six weeks, which is before many women even know they’re pregnant.
The Tampa Bay Times has reported on several instances of Florida’s “election police” showing up at the homes of people who signed the petition to get Amendment 4 on the ballot. The state claims that it’s looking for fraud, but Amendment 4 supporters see such actions as threatening. Florida, where Republicans have controlled state government for decades, created a state-funded agency with 15 employees and a budget of over $1 million to go after voter fraud in 2022. This is a terrible use of taxpayer money, as voter fraud is quite rare and “voter impersonation is virtually nonexistent,” as The Brennan Center for Justice puts it.
Furthermore, according to The Tampa Bay Times, the “deadline in state law to challenge the validity of the signatures has long passed.” Isaac Menasche, who got a visit from the election police, posted on Facebook that “The experience left me shaken,” and went on to write, “What troubled me was he had a folder on me containing my personal information — about 10 pages.”
Republicans know that strict abortion laws like those in Florida are unpopular. Two-thirds of Americans think that abortion should be legal in the first trimester, and the majority believe that striking down Roe v. Wade was the wrong decision. At the national level, G.O.P. leaders are trying to pretend that they are not maximally anti-abortion by claiming it’s an issue that should be left up to the states. Anna Paulina Luna, who has previously described herself as a “pro-life extremist,” is running for re-election in a Florida congressional district that Democrats are trying to flip and so refuses to say how she will vote on Amendment 4. She told Politico last week, “I think it’s a states’ rights issue.”
This is something Donald Trump has said when he’s not spinning fantasies about liberals executing babies or refusing to straightforwardly answer questions about whether he would veto a national abortion ban if re-elected. “states’ rights” is sometimes code for “let the voters decide.” But Florida is what a states’ rights approach to abortion looks like in practice: taking anti-democratic measures to keep the voters from getting a say.
“Even if you believe that states’ rights are what Trump is planning on continuing with, which is an open question, given that his position is so fuzzy, the people carrying out what a states’ rights agenda looks like are making absolutely no apologies for their alignment with the anti-abortion movement or the policies they’re trying to enact,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at U.C. Davis and the author of “Roe: The History of a National Obsession.”
“DeSantis is also an avatar of something that isn’t being reported, which is that a lot of Republicans aren’t moderating or softening or pretending to,” she added. Greg Abbott of Texas is another example of a governor with a full-throated anti-abortion agenda. Governor DeSantis is not just dispatching police to people’s doors. His own state Agency for Health Care Administration created ads and a website to oppose Amendment 4. The website blares “Florida is Protecting Life: Don’t let the fearmongers lie to you” and claims that “current Florida law protects women, Amendment 4 threatens women’s safety.” I would argue that Florida’s six-week ban puts far more women in danger — how many stories do we need to hear of miscarrying women risking their lives because doctors are afraid to treat them in states with abortion restrictions to believe them?
On Thursday, the A.C.L.U. and Southern Legal Counsel filed a lawsuit against the Agency for Health Care Administration “to halt the State of Florida’s unconstitutional misinformation campaign against Amendment 4.” The website seems to be pretty obviously in violation of Florida statute 104.31, which says that no officer of the state is allowed to “use his or her official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with an election or a nomination of office or coercing or influencing another person’s vote or affecting the result thereof.”
Ziegler wonders if DeSantis timed his antics knowing the slow pace of the legal system. “DeSantis is aware that anything that’s done about this might not be done in time to make a difference given how quickly the election is happening,” she said. Even if the A.C.L.U.’s case came up before November, DeSantis “probably likes his chances before a Supreme Court that he played a hugely disproportionate role in shaping, and one of the most conservative state supreme courts in the country.”
Even if you don’t support abortion rights, you should be outraged about this kind of illiberal behavior. Every poll I have seen suggests that a majority of Florida voters plan to vote yes on Amendment 4. But Florida amendments have a high bar — over 60 percent of the vote — to clear, and while some polls suggest that over three-quarters of Floridians support the measure, others are slightly below that 60 percent threshold, with a good chunk of undecided voters.
Louis Virelli, a professor at the Stetson University law school in Gulfport, Fla., told me that Amendment 4 is “a model of clarity,” and quite straightforward when compared to other amendments that have gone on the ballot in the state without quite so much fuss. “Any attempt to confuse the choice is somewhere between disingenuous and intentionally misleading,” Virelli said.
Voters should see through the states’ rights canard. If they are in favor of a woman’s right to choose, they need to be aware of how precarious abortion access is without Roe. “The fact that some states are still interested in protecting abortion rights on their own is good news for proponents of abortion rights, but is not any legal comfort at all,” Virelli said. “New York could experience a different election and take the right to terminate a pregnancy away from all New Yorkers tomorrow under the current constitutional regime.” It’s not “fearmongering” to point that out; it’s factual.
DeSantis is also publicly shaming Florida Republicans who will not come out against Amendment 4. He said: It’s “untenable to just sit here and let George Soros run amendments in our state and not be willing to stand up and say no. Not on our watch. That’s the least you can do as Republicans.”
Perhaps DeSantis is going so hard against his own because he is afraid that even if he bends the law, he could still lose. Alex Sink, the founder of Ruth’s List, which helps abortion-rights-supporting Democrats get elected in Florida, told me that DeSantis’s targeting of fellow Republicans made her laugh — because his bluster, and the polls, show he’s not as popular as he used to be. “There’s a reason why they haven’t come out against the amendment, because those people in those moderate districts know that more than 60 percent of their voters care about this issue.”
I hope she’s right.
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