Groups behind the push to put abortion rights on the Florida ballot next year have reached a major milestone: They believe they have collected all the signatures needed to put it to a vote.
The petition aims to place a state constitutional amendment to protect the right to an abortion on the November ballot.
It would protect abortion rights in Florida up to about 24 weeks of pregnancy, which is generally when a fetus is considered viable. This was the previous standard used in Florida, until the landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade was struck down last year, reversing nearly five decades of national protections.
Florida currently has a 15-week abortion ban, passed last year. A six-week ban was passed this year, but it will only go into effect if the 15-week ban is upheld by the Florida Supreme Court.
To put an abortion rights question on the ballot, 891,523 verified signatures are needed statewide by Feb. 1. As of Tuesday, 753,694 have already been verified, according to a state database. Hundreds of thousands are in the verification process, which can take a month.
“We’ve done 1.4 million petitions; we have a verification rate north of 70%,” said Anna Hochkammer, the executive director of Florida Women’s Freedom Coalition, one of the six groups behind the initiative. “We know that we have enough petitions; we know that data shows that we qualified in all the congressional districts and so we’re now shifting to Phase 2.”
The groups will now cease collecting signatures. County elections supervisors charge a fee per verification, and organizers believe it would be a waste of money to continue, said Hochkammer. They say with the verification rates holding steady, the math clearly works in their favor.
The almost-10,000 volunteers who have helped gather signatures will begin to focus on the next phase: Convincing people to actually show up and vote in November.
“I couldn’t ask for a better scenario from a grassroots perspective,” said Hochkammer. “These people are invested, trained, comfortable and have been engaging in grassroots politics on this issue for almost six months.”
The Florida Supreme Court still has to approve the language of the ballot measure. Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody has raised objections to the wording, including contending that the word “viability” can have multiple meanings.
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