Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ACCUSED Of FRAUDULENT Activities On Abortion

The Florida Department of State has launched an investigation into fraudulent activities surrounding abortion amendment petitions, a department spokesperson revealed to The Daily Wire on Friday.

“The Department of State has uncovered evidence of illegal conduct with fraudulent petitions,” the spokesperson stated. “We have a duty to seek justice for Florida citizens who were victimized by fraud and safeguard the integrity of Florida’s elections.”

“Our office will continue this investigation and make referrals to FDLE [Florida Department of Law Enforcement] as appropriate,” the spokesperson added.

The investigation follows claims by The Tampa Bay Times that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was accused of “political interference” when his deputy secretary of state requested a review of approximately 36,000 signatures collected in Hillsborough, Orange, Palm Beach, and Osceola counties.

Activists associated with the pro-abortion group Floridians Protecting Freedom have amassed nearly 1 million signatures in an effort to place Amendment 4 on the November ballot. This proposed measure would override Florida’s existing law protecting unborn babies with a heartbeat and establish a “constitutional right to abortion before fetal viability,” meaning before the fetus can survive outside the womb.

“This amendment is written maybe more liberal than New York and California, but you would basically have a cottage industry, where people would be coming into Florida for this purpose,” DeSantis remarked in late June during a call with Florida faith leaders. “And look, we’re a tourism state, but we want to be family-friendly tourism, not abortion tourism.”

DeSantis and his team are vigorously opposing the amendment, arguing that its wording is intentionally misleading.

“The way they wrote the summary, there are people that are pro-life that poll in favor of this because they think it’s a pro-life amendment,” the governor continued. “So, it needs to be very clear to every voter exactly what direction this amendment is going.”

Floridians Protecting Freedom did not immediately respond to The Daily Wire’s request for comment.

Left-wing activists have increasingly used abortion amendments to bypass pro-life legislation. Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in May 2022, pro-abortion groups have intensified their efforts to embed a “right” to abortion in state constitutions—even in traditionally conservative states.

These initiatives have seen success; in Michigan, voters legalized abortion up until birth through a November 2022 ballot measure that bars any laws protecting the unborn if a “health care professional” deems the abortion “medically needed to protect a patient’s life or physical or mental health.”

According to a KFF ballot tracker, up to 10 states could feature abortion measures on the 2024 ballot. These amendments often receive financial backing from leftist organizations like Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as support from figures like former President Barack Obama and singer John Legend.

Concerns about signature gathering practices for abortion amendments are not new. During the push for Issue 1 in Ohio, pro-life activists accused the ACLU of hiring out-of-state signature collectors who misrepresented the ballot amendment’s implications for parents. Video evidence also showed a signature collector discussing invalid signatures.

“The ACLU’s extreme anti-parent amendment is so unpopular that it couldn’t even rely on grassroots support to collect signatures,” Protect Women Ohio press secretary Amy Natoce stated in July 2023.

“The ACLU paid out-of-state signature collectors to lie to Ohioans about its dangerous amendment that will strip parents of their rights, permit minors to undergo sex change operations without their parents’ knowledge or consent, and allow painful abortion on demand through all nine months. The ACLU’s attempts to hijack Ohio’s constitution to further its own radical agenda would be pathetic if they weren’t so dangerous.”

In Arkansas, election officials rejected petitions gathered by Arkansans for Limited Government, a pro-abortion group pushing the state’s abortion petition, due to improper documentation about paid signature gatherers, CBS News reported. The state Supreme Court upheld this rejection, preventing the proposal from appearing on the November ballot.