Deputy Secretary of State for Legal Affairs and Election Integrity Brad McVay has asked law enforcement to investigate claims of “illegal petition forms” and “voter fraud” related to the pro-abortion amendment 4.
Pro-life voters in Palm Beach County claim their signatures were forged on the original petition for Amendment 4 to be placed on the November ballot. The amendment was proposed by the pro-abortion group Floridians Protecting Freedom.
For the then-proposed amendment to get on the November 5 ballot, Floridians Protecting Freedom needed over 891,523 signatures on the initial petition.
Amendment 4 would create provisions in Florida’s state constitution so that:
No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.
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The Daily Signal detailed the concerns of the ambiguous amendment introduced by the pro-abortion group:
Because the text of the constitutional amendment contains no definition of “health” or “health care provider,” the measure would likely legalize abortion at any stage of the pregnancy if anyone who claims medical expertise asserts the mother would benefit from it physically, emotionally, or otherwise.
When residents of the state discovered their names on the petition, they reported the alleged fraud to the Palm Beach Supervisor of Elections’ office, which in turn contacted Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration about the allegations.
Additional investigations revealed that deceased Floridians were also found among the petition’s signees.
McVay this week wrote a detailed request to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Election Crime Unit asking for a deeper investigation into the claims.
Mcvay wrote:
We have received some alarming information from the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Office over the past several months regarding fraudulent constitutional initiative petitions received from Floridians Protecting Freedom, Inc. (the sponsoring political committee for Initiative Petition 23-07, the Abortion Amendment).
“As detailed in the attachments to this letter,” Mcvay continued:
The Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Office received petitions from Floridians Protecting Freedom, Ine. (the sponsoring political committee) who were identified as not actually having signed the initiative petitions. The Palm Beach County Supervisor then secured signed complaint forms from the individual voters attesting to the fact that they did not sign the petition forms submitted in their names. Some of the above-named circulators also signed petitions on behalf of individuals who were deceased at the time the petition was allegedly signed. The circulators appear to have forged the voters” Signatures and inserted the voters* personal identifiable information into the petitions without consent. The petition forms indicate that the above-listed individuals are the paid circulators who collected the petitions.
Mcvay included copies of the complaints from Palm Beach County. One pro-life voter stated: “Someone signed my name on a petition asking the government to stay of out abortion control. I am pro-life. I would never sign that.”
Additional complaints suggested growing outrage in the community
“My name was forged on a petition ‘limiting government interference w/ abortion,’” wrote a Palm Beach resident. “Luckily, the Supervisor of Elections caught it and sent me a letter. The responsible party should be prosecuted.”
DeSantis addressed the allegations of fraud on Monday. “Our tolerance in the state of Florida for any type of election-related fraud is zero,” he stated.
LifeNews Note:Elizabeth Kidney writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.
