The Governor Ron DeSantis administration has just begun an investigation of around 36,000 signatures that were used to get the horrible abortion amendment on the ballot in Florida.
Deputy Secretary of State for legal affairs and elections integrity Brad McVay is the one who began the investigation, suggesting that certain petition circulators are either known or suspected fraudsters.
Here’s more from Tampa Bay Times:
Florida’s Department of State is examining thousands of petition signatures that were used to get the abortion amendment on November ballots, saying it’s looking for fraud.
In a move that supporters of the amendment fear could be “political interference,” Gov. Ron DeSantis’ deputy secretary of state has asked supervisors in Hillsborough, Orange, Palm Beach and Osceola counties to gather roughly 36,000 signatures for the state to review.
The signatures were among the nearly 1 million collected — and verified by local supervisors as belonging to real Floridians — to permit Amendment 4 to appear before voters in November. The amendment would protect abortion access and undo the state’s six-week abortion ban that DeSantis championed.
Whether the request could be used to challenge the amendment or strike it from the ballot is not clear. A deadline in state law to challenge the validity of the signatures has long passed.
Defeating the amendment has become a top priority for DeSantis this fall. The governor has organized and supported one of the main groups opposing the initiative.
Two supervisors told the Times on Wednesday that the state’s inquiries were highly unusual.
“I have never in my tenure had a request like this one,” said Osceola County Supervisor of Elections Mary Jane Arrington, a Democrat who has been in the job for 16 years.
Brad McVay, deputy secretary of state for legal affairs and elections integrity, made the requests. In phone calls and follow-up emails since late last month, he told supervisors that the office was investigating ballot petition fraud.
McVay sent supervisors lists of names of petition circulators suspected of committing fraud.
“Most of the circulators listed represent known or suspected fraudsters, several others have very concerning invalidity rates,” McVay wrote in an email that was forwarded to Hillsborough County’s elections supervisor. “We would like to review the petitions that were verified as valid submitted by these individuals.”
In Orange County, someone from the state went in person to the supervisor’s office to ask about petitions, spokesperson Christopher Heath said.
The state in recent years has seen a surge in ballot petition fraud, in which somebody working on behalf of a campaign submits phony or fraudulent signatures. The secretary of state’s voter fraud unit, which was created in 2022, has aided in investigations that led to the arrest of two people this year on charges of forging signatures in support of Amendment 4.
The state in its most recent requests is only asking for signatures that were already deemed valid, a move that struck some supervisors as odd.
Past petition fraud cases have been built around signatures that supervisors deemed invalid or obviously fraudulent. In the 2022 effort to expand casino gaming, for example, someone fraudulently submitted the signatures of Marion County’s elections supervisor and his wife.
When asked why the state was focusing on verified signatures, Department of State spokesperson Ryan Ash did not say.
“By statute, the Department of State has an obligation to investigate credible allegations of fraudulent petitions,” Ash said in a statement.
Lauren Brenzel, campaign director for Floridians Protecting Freedom, which is leading the Amendment 4 effort, said the state already confirmed the amendment petitions early this year. Brenzel said any attempt to question the verified petitions’ validity and undermine the vote “is an attack on Floridians’ rights, their futures, and democracy at-large.”
Do you want to know what a attack on democracy looks like? MURDERING A BABY IN THE WOMB! That person never has a chance to exist outside of the womb and they never grow up, form opinions about things and exercise their right to vote.
These people are just evil and I hope McVay finds legitimate fraud and it wrecks this amendment and gets it thrown off the ballot. It shouldn’t be on the ballot to begin with because it’s murder.
