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As America’s Governor defended election integrity efforts revolving around a proposed abortion amendment, fearmongers painted Florida as a police state over questioned petitioners.

“The experience left me shaken…”

Having repeatedly proven himself unwilling to back down when it came to the culture war, be it against Disney, George Soros-backed prosecutors, or otherwise, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ latest fight showed he wasn’t messing around with out-of-state entities trying to alter their constitution.

“Anyone who submitted a petition that is a valid voter, that is totally within their rights to do it,” he said during a Monday roundtable when asked about investigations into Amendment 4, a proposal vying to undo the state’s six-week abortion ban. “We are not investigating that. What they are investigating is fraudulent petitions. We know that this group did submit on behalf of dead people.”

The facts regarding concerns over the validity of petitions to get the amendment on the ballot for Nov. 5 didn’t stop the narrative that the governor was somehow an authoritarian as the Tampa Bay Times contacted a Lee County resident who had been questioned by an investigator.

“I’m not a person who is going out there protesting for abortion. I just felt strongly and I took the opportunity when the person asked me, to say yeah, I’ll sign that petition,” said Isaac Menasche who had posted on social media about his experience over being questioned that it was “obvious to me that a significant effort was exerted to determine if indeed I had signed the petition.”

The voter also said, “The experience left me shaken…What troubled me was he had a folder on me containing my personal information — about 10 pages.”

Becky Castellanos, another Lee County voter, asserted she was “surprised but not surprised” by the knock at her door.

“It didn’t surprise me that they were doing something like this to try to debunk these petitions to get it taken off of the ballot,” she told the Times.

After pointing out that the leaders of the Amendment 4 effort, Floridians Protecting Freedom, had hired California-based PCI Consultants to do their signature collection, the same group who was used for the 2016 amendment to legalize medical marijuana and the 2018 amendment to allow felony convicted Floridians to vote, the Times offered a comment from ACLU of Florida spokesperson Keisha Mulfort.

“This is very clearly a fishing expedition. It is more important than ever for Floridians to reject these authoritarian tactics and vote yes on Amendment 4 in November,” said Mulfort.

Department of State spokesperson Ryan Ash in an email to the Times stated, “We have a duty to seek justice for Florida citizens who were victimized by fraud and safeguard the integrity of Florida’s election.”

“Our office will continue this investigation and make referrals to (the Florida Department of Law Enforcement) as appropriate.”

Likewise, the Daily Mail reported that the director of the ‘Yes on 4’ campaign, Lauren Brenzel, had argued, “Amendment 4 was placed on the ballot by nearly one million Floridians around the state and across party lines who believe that people, not politicians, deserve the freedom to make their own health care decisions.”

“But the State will stop at nothing to keep in place their near-total abortion ban,” she added.

Tuesday, DeSantis held firm concerning the investigations and said during a press conference, “We can’t be in a situation where people are trying to short circuit the process by submitting invalid petitions,” before talking about efforts to clean up the voter rolls.

To his point, Florida’s Voice reported that state communications had specified 35 individuals were being scrutinized who accounted for “nearly 37,000 submitted petitions” of which “23,018 were verified as valid” by local election supervisors.

A letter from the state detailed, “The circulators appeared 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,” added the letter.

The governor also defended the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration publishing a site explaining the “vague” language of the amendment by asserting, “Everything that is put out is factual. It is not electioneering,” and adding, “I’m glad they are doing it.”

Kevin Haggerty
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