As deadline looms, Broward County is a focus for Florida abortion rights petition drive

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Marvis Williams of Sunrise finally had her chance to check something important off her to-do list.

She heard about a petition to get abortion rights on the November 2024 ballot but hadn’t known where to go to sign it. On a rainy Thursday night in Plantation, Williams arrived for a holiday meal, and signed the petition along with others at the Plantation restaurant where a petition drive took place.

“A woman should have the opportunity to make the decision about abortion,” said Williams, 68. “It’s her decision. I would hope that women are aware of the petition and make some phone calls to find out where they can go to sign it.”

Supporters of a proposed constitutional amendment to ensure abortion rights in Florida are targeting Broward County to get enough petition signatures to get on the 2024 ballot. With crucial deadlines looming to get the required 891,523 valid signatures from voters throughout the state by Feb. 1, activists are pushing hard in congressional districts where they believe can get more signatures. The signatures must come from a distribution of Florida’s congressional districts.

Broward County’s Congressional District 23 is one of the districts activists are targeting because of its previous high voter turnout.

“Over the past two weeks we have had multiple grassroots efforts,” said Emma Collum, founder of Reproductive Freedom Collective of Broward County. She said the efforts have paid off and are ongoing.

As of Friday, the Florida Division of Elections has verified 753,306 petitions statewide — about 85% of the total required to get the amendment on the ballot.

In Broward, the amendment supporters set a goal of 32,869 verified signatures. Volunteers have pushed hard, gathering signatures at events like Fort Lauderdale’s Jazz Brunch last weekend. They will be at the Parkland Farmer’s Market this Sunday.

As of Friday, the Floridians Protecting Freedom committee, organizers of the statewide campaign, said the target Broward district has 29,102 verified signatures. “We are 88% there and that’s incredible,” Collum said. “Ten days ago we were at around 25,000 … it’s all because of the on-the-ground effort that’s happened in the last 10 days.”

The efforts by Floridians Protecting Freedom to give voters the right to decide the fate of abortion access in Florida began in May after after the Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis approved a law that would prevent abortions after six weeks. That law has not yet gone into effect. It’s on hold pending the outcome of a legal battle in the conservative Florida Supreme Court over Florida’s 15-week abortion limit that became law in 2022.

Florida Sen. Lauren Book, a Democrat who represents parts of Broward County, says allowing voters to have their say via a constitutional amendment in November 2024 is the only real chance of guaranteeing women abortion access in Florida.

“We don’t have any other options,” she said. “I know once the 15 weeks goes to six weeks we are going to be in a very dire place and that’s the reality. This is our only option. I know we are going to get there. We just have to keep pushing and we can’t let up.”

Abortion right advocates are targeting Dec. 31 to gather all signatures, allowing time for the Supervisor of Elections offices throughout the state to verify them. The closer a campaign gets to the deadline, the costlier it is to find petition gatherers and pay the supervisors of elections to verify signatures. Collum says the campaign has raised $8.9 million (By comparison, Ohio’s initiative enshrining abortion rights in that state’s Constitution raised more than $28 million.)

The campaign must pay overtime to Supervisor of Elections officers around the state to verify signatures, and it must collect more than needed to account for those that may not be able to be verified.

High stakes for advocates and opponents

The stakes are high not only for women in Florida, but also for the thousands who travel from other states with stricter restrictions on the procedure.

Collum says the issue has support on both sides — so far 150,000 registered Republican voters have signed a petition in support of the ballot amendment that would bar the state from restricting abortion “before viability,” which is usually at 24 weeks.

“This is absolutely happening whether people want to believe it or not,” Collum said.

But the opposition is campaigning, too.

“The fact is, the pro-abortion petition initiative is failing big time,” said Andrew Shirvell, founder and executive director of Florida Voice for the Unborn.

Shirvell says he and other pro-life groups have launched a DECLINE TO SIGN campaign, handing out Decline to Sign Awareness Cards in communities throughout Florida.

“We want to be done by Christmas and that means getting rid of all our cards,” Shirvell said. “We have only few hundred left. They have gone like hotcakes over the past couple of months.”

Shirvell said he and his Christian and Catholic activists are holding online prayer meetings to pray that the petition drive fails.

“I can see their campaign strategy and it’s not going to work,” he said. “I think they are going to come up short, in certain districts where they have to meet requirements. Those are the districts where they have been failing all along. If they can’t get enough signatures in the last three to four red districts in time by Feb. 1, their campaign is over. That is what we are hoping for.”

Even as the Floridians Protecting Freedom committee scrambles to get signatures, it also needs the Florida Supreme Court to sign off on the proposed ballot wording, which is under review. Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody has argued that the court should keep the proposed constitutional amendment off the ballot, saying its wording is misleading — an assertion that abortion rights amendment supporters dispute.

The final hurdle would be getting enough approval from Florida voters. The threshold for a constitutional amendment in Florida is 60%, a difficult measure on any issue.

A University of North Florida poll released in late November found 62% of Floridians indicating support for the amendment, more than enough for passage. The poll also showed the initiative receiving majority support across gender, racial, generational, and party lines.

An abortion rights win in Republican-led Ohio has given momentum to the Florida campaign, organizers say. Voters have sided with abortion rights in five states that held direct votes over the last year.

Shirvell said he doesn’t expect Florida to follow Ohio’s lead.

“In some ways Ohio mirrors Florida, but in a lot of ways it’s different,” he said. “They won with a low voter turnout. Next year in Florida the voter turnout will be huge. Florida has a larger population and unlike Ohio, which needed a simple majority, in Florida the threshold of 60% is difficult to reach, and that’s good news for Florida.”

After the newest numbers of verified petitions were released Friday, Statewide Campaign Director of Floridians Protecting Freedom, Lauren Brenzel, issued a statement: “We will continue to collect and submit signatures to the Division of Elections until we’re sure we’ve qualified in every congressional district necessary and they provide us with official notification we will be on the 2024 ballot.”