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September 11, 2024
Ron DeSantis Goes Full Big Brother on Abortion Rights Supporters
DeSantis is fighting hard to block a ballot initiative codifying abortion rights in Florida—so hard he’s sent police to question people who signed a petition supporting the measure.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
(Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)
Florida governor and national embarrassment Ron DeSantis has found a new and terrifying way to violate the constitutional rights of his constituents. DeSantis usually aims at the 14th Amendment rights of Florida residents by denying equal protection of the laws to people who are gay, trans, or read books written by Black authors. But now, Governor Rain Boots is taking aim at the First Amendment by using state forces to chill the rights of free speech and free association.
According to multiple reports, DeSantis has been using his Department of Election Crimes and Security—a task force he ordered the Florida legislature to create in 2022 to investigate the false and unfounded claims of voter fraud that Republicans like to make whenever people of color vote in ways that displease them—to accost Florida residents in their homes. The action that triggered DeSantis’s ire appears to be a petition these residents signed to add Amendment 4 to the November ballot. Amendment 4 would codify the right to an abortion in Florida’s Constitution. The amendment seeks to undo what DeSantis did when he signed a six-week abortion ban into law in Florida.
People who have been harassed report that state police officers have shown up at their homes and asked if they signed the petition—and then required them to show state identification before the officers would leave. In at least one case, a person was asked if a family member had signed the petition and warned that the relatives could be the “victim” of identity fraud.
The DeSantis regime has taken other steps to undermine the proposed amendment, including posting a website stippled with misinformation about the amendment and writing a description of the measure—on the ballot itself—that claims, untruthfully, that it will harm the state’s budget. It’s always worth noting that these anti-choice Republicans are happy to force people to give birth against their will but unwilling to do anything to help women pay for the considerable expenses involved in being pregnant for nine months or raising a child for 18 years.
Ryan Ash, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of State, told the Tampa Bay Times that the home visits are necessary because his office has “uncovered evidence of illegal conduct with fraudulent petitions.” He went on to say that the investigation—which is looking into whether some signatures were forged—would continue and that criminal referrals would be made.
Thus far, no actual evidence of signature fraud has been reported (of course). And DeSantis’s track record is pathetic enough to raise serious questions about whether any will be. In 2022, DeSantis’s new voter-intimidation task force arrested 20 people for allegedly committing voter fraud in Florida during the 2020 election. That’s 20 people out of over 11 million votes cast. But here’s the kicker: The government was unable to sustain prosecutions against most of the 20. It was all a stunt. It’s always a stunt with these people.
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The intimidation tactic at play here should be obvious, but since Republicans excel at feigned ignorance, I’ll spell it out. Sending the police to the homes of people who signed a ballot petition is a way to discourage people from signing ballot petitions—or voting for the initiative once it’s on the ballot. It’s a way for the DeSantis administration to tell people that the government knows who they are and that they’re being watched by the state.
Telling family members that someone in their family signed a petition supporting abortion rights is also a way to discourage participation, but, more than that, it is a concerted government effort to “out” people and potentially make them victims of domestic violence.
What DeSantis is doing should be considered a violation of the First Amendment. He’s using the government to chill the free association of the people. If you happened to sign a petition for Amendment 4, the cops showed up at your house. But there have been no reports of the cops harassing people who signed a petition to get Amendment 2 on the Florida ballot; that amendment would establish a constitutional right to hunt and fish. The DeSantis administration is not investigating voter fraud; it’s investigating people who support reproductive rights, and that should be a violation of the First Amendment.
I say “should” be a violation because… who’s going to tell DeSantis it is a violation of the First Amendment? Normally, it would be the courts. But the Florida State Supreme Court lives in his back pocket. The Supreme Court of the United States hates reproductive rights more than DeSantis does. The fact that DeSantis can do this is yet one more consequence of ceding the judicial branch of the government to Republican supermajorities for a generation.
Even if the courts weren’t already captured by the cult of forced-birth, though, getting this case in front of a court would be difficult. Arguably, the Department of Justice could—and should—sue DeSantis and Florida for violating both the First Amendment and the Voting Rights Act, as Florida’s actions could be interpreted as voter intimidation. But saying “the Department of Justice should sue” is like saying “I should practice meditation techniques and wellness before the election.” It’s true, but it’s never going to happen. Merrick Garland let DeSantis get away with kidnapping migrants and shipping them across state lines like unwanted garbage. He’s not going to do a thing to stop this.
The individual voters who’ve been questioned, or a civil liberties organization operating on their behalf, could also potentially sue. But it would not be an easy case. The legal test in First Amendment cases is whether the government is pursuing its legitimate interest in the “least restrictive” way. I’d say that sending police officers to people’s homes to interrogate them about reproductive rights is not the “least” the government could be doing to suss out voter fraud—but I’m not a Republican judge, so my application of normal legal standards literally doesn’t matter.
As for the voting rights violations, there are two problems. The first is that the state has a legitimate interest in preventing voter fraud, even though Republican claims of voter fraud are almost always illegitimate. The second is that most cases of voter intimidation are brought when something has been done to harass a person while they are voting or to confuse them or prevent them from voting at all. Again, I would entertain the argument that pre-voting harassment constitutes voter intimidation, but I’m not a Republican who shares Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society’s aversion to democratic participation.
All of this means that DeSantis’s latest experiment with antidemocratic fascism is likely to continue. The people of Florida will keep electing Republicans, and those Republicans will continue to use their power to violate the constitutional rights of the people of Florida.
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Still, Amendment 4 remains on the Florida ballot this November. If Democrats in the state simply show up to vote in record numbers for reproductive rights, they might also be able to vote out some of the Republicans who are trying to intimidate them. The best way to stop voter intimidation is to not be afraid—and to vote the bullies out.
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Katrina vanden Heuvel
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Elie Mystal
Elie Mystal is The Nation’s justice correspondent and the host of its legal podcast, Contempt of Court. He is also an Alfred Knobler Fellow at the Type Media Center. His first book is the New York Times bestseller Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution, published by The New Press. Elie can be followed @ElieNYC.