Tallahassee
Isaac Menasche remembers being at the Cape Coral farmer’s market last year when someone asked him if he’d sign a petition to get Florida’s abortion amendment on the ballot.
He said yes — and he told a law enforcement officer as much when one showed up at the door of his Lee County home earlier this week.
Menasche said he was surprised when the plainclothes officer twice asked if it was really Menasche who had signed the petition. The officer said he was looking into potential petition fraud.
Though the officer was professional and courteous, Menasche, who has had little interaction with police in his life, said the encounter left him shaken.
“I’m not a person who is going out there protesting for abortion,” Menasche said. “I just felt strongly and I took the opportunity when the person asked me, to say yeah, I’ll sign that petition.”
The officer’s visit appears to be part of a broad — and unusual — effort by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration to inspect thousands of already verified and validated petitions for Amendment 4 in the final two months before Election Day. The amendment would overturn Florida’s six-week abortion ban by proposing to protect abortion access in Florida until viability.
Since last week, DeSantis’ secretary of state has ordered elections supervisors in at least four counties to send to Tallahassee at least 36,000 petition forms already deemed to have been signed by real people. Since the Times first reported on this effort, Alachua and Broward counties have confirmed they also received requests from the state.
One 16-year supervisor said the request was unprecedented. The state did not ask for rejected petitions, which have been the basis for past fraud cases.
DeSantis, who signed the abortion ban into law, has organized opposition to the amendment, and his office’s request to supervisors has supporters of the amendment fearful it could be “political interference.”
On Thursday, one state agency that reports to DeSantis launched a website advocating against the amendment, prompting Democratic lawmakers and others to question whether the action violated state law.
Menasche later posted on Facebook that it was “obvious to me that a significant effort was exerted to determine if indeed I had signed the petition.” He told the Times that the officer who showed up at his door had a copy of Menasche’s driver’s license and other documents related to him. Menasche said he does not recall which agency the officer was with.
Department of State spokesperson Ryan Ash said the agency has “uncovered evidence of illegal conduct with fraudulent petitions.”
“We have a duty to seek justice for Florida citizens who were victimized by fraud and safeguard the integrity of Florida’s elections,” Ash wrote in an email. “Our office will continue this investigation and make referrals to (the Florida Department of Law Enforcement) as appropriate.”
Spokespeople for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Becky Castellanos, another Lee County voter, said Florida Department of Law Enforcement Officer Gary Negrinelli knocked on her door last week. He showed his badge and gave Castellanos his card. He asked about a family member of Castellanos, saying they could be a victim of fraud.
Castellanos was concerned it could be identity fraud or credit card fraud and invited the officer inside while she called her family member. The officer and her relative talked over Castellanos’ phone as she stood by.
The officer asked about the abortion petition her relative signed, Castellanos said, and sent a picture of it over. One number on the date of birth appeared wrong — a three instead of a two, she said. But her relative confirmed it was his petition that he signed, and the officer accepted it.
Castellanos said she felt intimidated by having a law enforcement officer come to her door. And she said she was “surprised but not surprised” when she learned it was about Amendment 4. She said she thinks if Florida could do away with abortion entirely, it would.
“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 said.
The officer also mentioned to Castellanos that he had been talking to other voters whose names were on petitions suspected of being fraudulent.
Christopher Fine, spokesperson for the Lee County Sheriff’s Office, told the Times the agency was not notified of “the state agency’s independent investigation.”
It is unclear how the Lee County voters’ petitions were flagged. The Lee County Supervisor of Elections office received a request from the state for only one voter’s signed petition, and supervisor Tommy Doyle said he wasn’t sure why officers were showing up at voters’ doors.
Floridians Protecting Freedom, which is leading the Amendment 4 effort, hired California-based PCI Consultants to collect signatures. The company was involved in several successful petition drives in Florida, including the 2016 amendment legalizing medical marijuana and the 2018 amendment allowing Floridians with felony convictions to vote.
Floridians Protecting Freedom has paid PCI more than $18 million, campaign finance records show. It also spent more than $750,000 getting local supervisors to comb through and verify the signatures.
PCI has procedures to maintain the integrity of the petition-gathering process, said ACLU of Florida spokesperson Keisha Mulfort. That includes a quality control process in which incomplete or potentially inaccurate petitions were flagged for supervisors, she said. The ACLU of Florida is a coalition partner with Floridians Protecting Freedom.
“This is very clearly a fishing expedition,” Mulfort said. “It is more important than ever for Floridians to reject these authoritarian tactics and vote yes on Amendment 4 in November.”