Abortion access is broadly popular, and whenever the issue has appeared on a ballot since the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022, abortion rights have prevailed. The right miscalculated wildly here, clearly unprepared for the idea that taking bodily autonomy away from half the population would galvanize voters. With abortion on the ballot in 10 states in 2024, conservatives aren’t focusing on turning out their ostensible majority of anti-abortion voters. Rather, they’re engaging in anti-democratic efforts to block people from voting on abortion rights at all. It’s just another component of the right’s strategy to render elections a chaotic, confusing process.
Let’s start with Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis is trying to impose his retrograde hard-right views on his citizens. These days, that means sending law enforcement officers to question voters who signed a petition to get abortion rights on the ballot. DeSantis is deploying the weight and resources of the state to assert, without evidence, that there was fraud in obtaining petition signatures, all despite that the deadline to challenge signatures passed months ago. It’s voter intimidation, pure and simple.
Florida’s ballot measure would enshrine constitutional protections for abortion into the state’s constitution by amending it to prohibit any laws that ban or restrict abortion before fetal viability. Polls show a majority of Florida’s voters support the measure, so conservatives have pulled out all the stops to get it off the ballot. Despite their rhetoric that they wanted abortion “returned to the states,” what conservatives like DeSantis really want is to ban abortion even if their voters don’t.
In a speech about the ballot measure last month, DeSantis admitted, “If you look at the state of Florida, we do not have a pro-life majority. We’ve got a big chunk, but we don’t have a majority. If only people that are pro-life oppose it, it very well might pass.” In a normal, functional democracy, this would mean that Florida’s pro-abortion-rights majority would prevail and abortion would be constitutionally protected in the state. Instead, DeSantis is trying to make sure this majority doesn’t get to vote on it.
Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd recently ordered elections supervisors in multiple counties to examine at least 36,000 petition forms, even though the state’s elections officials already reviewed and approved those signatures. Byrd, who was appointed by DeSantis in 2022, is no neutral overseer of the electoral process. He’s an election denier who oversees the state’s election integrity unit, where he goes after the nonexistent problem of voter fraud by doing things like fining groups that register voters. He’s married to a QAnon-curious insurrection enthusiast and Moms for Liberty member. In other words, Byrd is the perfect DeSantis appointee to helm an attack on democracy.
Besides having police knock on people’s doors to ask if they really, truly meant to sign a petition, the state is focusing on “circulators”—paid groups that work to obtain signatures. The state department has asked to pull every verified petition associated with certain circulators, saying they “represent known or suspected fraudsters.”
Presumably, by saying signatures from certain circulators were all obtained by fraud, the state is hoping it can mass invalidate enough signatures to get below the threshold required to get a measure on the ballot. Organizers were required to collect 891,523 petition signatures, and they got 993,387—a cushion of over 100,000 signatures. It’s not clear how this effort is different from a regular signature challenge or why DeSantis should be allowed to pursue it months after the deadline, but who can stop him?
The state is also spending taxpayer money to attack the measure by having the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration put up a new official web page saying the abortion measure threatens women’s safety. It’s full of right-wing talking points about how Florida’s anti-abortion laws are there to mitigate health risks to women and children and stop dangerous, unsanitary abortions, and the page warns that Florida would become an “abortion tourism” state if the measure passes. And while Florida law forbids state employees from using their official authority to influence an election, it seems unlikely any employee of DeSantis’ administration will be slapped with the misdemeanor charge the statute carries.
Over in Missouri, the judiciary is aiding anti-abortion forces. Last Friday, Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh—Rush Limbaugh’s cousin—ruled that the abortion measure already on the ballot did not comply with state law regarding signature gathering for petitions. Missouri requires that a petition for signature collection disclose all sections of existing law or the constitution that would be repealed if the ballot measure passes.
As in Florida, the measure has strong support, with 52% of likely voters saying they’ll vote in favor, including 32% of Republicans. But in suing to invalidate the petition, the plaintiffs raised a host of right-wing culture warrior fears, saying the language could also overturn the state’s bans on female genital mutilation and cloning and let transgender minors get gender-affirming medical care. Limbaugh sided with anti-abortion activists, including two state lawmakers, and ruled that the petition was a “blatant violation” of the law since it didn’t include a laundry list of everything that might be affected by a proposed broad constitutional provision protecting reproductive freedom.
Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the group backing the ballot measure, has filed a notice of appeal. Limbaugh did not order the measure removed from the ballot, saying that would be for another court to decide, but since the deadline for ballot printing is Tuesday, it isn’t clear what will happen if a higher court agrees and strikes the measure, or what happens if the matter is still undecided in the courts when the ballot deadline passes.
What is clear—in both Missouri and Florida—is that conservatives will do anything to make sure that voters don’t have a voice on abortion, so much so that they are willing to throw the ballot process in their state into disarray. Indeed, that disarray is likely viewed as a feature, not a bug. Across battleground states, the GOP is planning to disrupt and delay election certification and is filing lawsuits about election processes, with the hope of sowing confusion in the event of a close race. These attempts to thwart a vote on abortion rights by last-minute attacks fit neatly within an overall plan to create enough electoral bedlam that Trump somehow gets ushered into office even if he doesn’t win.
And that, of course, would be the most anti-democratic result of all.
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