Cierra Huthnance came running over to a group of “Vote Yes on 4” volunteers when she heard they were collecting pledges to vote for Amendment 4. It would enshrine abortion protections into the Florida constitution should it get at least 60% of the vote in the November General Election.
“Oh yeah, sign me up,” said Huthnance, an 18-year-old University of Central Florida student. “Nobody should have the right to control somebody's body like that.”
The college freshman wasn’t old enough to vote in the primary election and will cast her vote for the first time in November. As for her primary concerns, Huthnance said abortion rights are at the top of the list.
“It just is a matter of healthcare. I don't understand why people don't support it. Especially if it's not bothering you. It’s literally, just the right to choose,” she said.
The young, first-time voter isn’t alone.
Why they’re getting involved
Working to get pledge cards, Lola Fontanez, 18 of Orlando, volunteered with the “Vote Yes on 4” campaign because she wanted a more active role in educating people on Amendment 4.
For her, it’s all about limiting government interference.
“By the time I was a (high school) sophomore, Roe v Wade was overturned, the Dobbs decision happened, and I was now afraid of not only figuring out where I was going to school and figuring out college applications, but what would be safe for me (in Florida),” Fontanez said.
In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court stripped away the constitutional right to an abortion, returning that power to the states in a case known as Dobbs v Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization.
That same year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a 15-week abortion ban. The next year he signed a bill for a 6-week ban, which didn’t become law until earlier this year after the Florida Supreme Court ruled the 15-week ban was constitutionally sound.
Prior to the court’s decision on the 15-week ban, a pro-choice coalition known as Floridians Protecting Freedom petitioned to get on the November ballot the Amendment 4 proposal, aka, the “Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion.”
Out at UCF, hundreds of students passed by Fontanez, standing at the busy junction by the campus library. It was the first week of school.
“Excuse me, do you know about Florida’s extreme abortion ban?” she called out to a group of students passing by as they made their way from one class to another. Most passed by looking down at their phones, or making an effort not to make eye contact. Of the few who did stop, most didn’t know about the state’s 6-week ban.
“They are even less aware of Amendment 4 as a whole, and about our initiative,” Fontanez said.
She tried a different tactic and instead called out “Hello! Have you heard about Amendment 4?”
More students stopped for that line. Many who did were open to signing pledge-to-vote cards and learning about how to register to vote. In about 2 hours, Fontanez collected more than 50 cards.
“I really, truly think that we just need to make sure that young people are aware and that they are ready to vote yes on four in November,” she said.
Searching for unlikely voters
Floridians Protecting Freedom is counting on that, too.
Democrat, Orlando Representative Anna Eskamani is a key figure in the Floridians Protecting Freedom group. She said that part of the strategy to get Amendment 4 passed has been to find unlikely voters, students, for example.
“The majority of folks agree that a six-week ban is not only incredibly extreme, but it's just not realistic to how women experience pregnancy, and there is a desire to get politicians out of the exam room and to allow these personal decisions,” Eskamani said.
While young voters famously have a low voter turnout rate, Eskamani and her team have found that Amendment 4 is striking a chord with the Gen-Z crowd.
“The numbers that we're getting on voter registration at UCF and on campuses across the Sunshine State have been three to four times what we usually get in a day,” Eskamani said. That enthusiasm has been exciting to see.”
Voter registration numbers won’t be released until sometime after the registration deadline (Tuesday, Oct. 7).
At the end of July, the University of North Florida published a poll suggesting that Amendment 4 has the bipartisan support it needs to pass with 69%, up from 62% in 2023. However, on Sept. 30, a poll by the New York Times and the Siena College Research Institute showed the amendment only had 46% approval.
Even so, Eskamani thinks with the help of the Gen-Z vote the Amendment will have the numbers it needs to push across the 60% approval threshold. But she’s concerned about what the state will do to kill momentum.
Government interference
In September, the Agency for Health Care Administration published a webpage and produced commercial videos with a campaign against Amendment 4. A state agency campaigning against a ballot measure is unprecedented, said Dr. Robyn Powell, a public health law professor at Rollins College.
“Florida's law explicitly says that public officials cannot try to essentially sway a vote one way or another. They're doing much more on this website than providing information. They are fear-mongering in many ways,” Powell said.
However, a Florida judge disagreed. On Sept. 30. Leon County Judge Jonathan Sjostrom, who serves on the state’s 2nd Judicial Circuit Court, rejected the Floridians Protecting Freedom group's request for an injunction against AHCA’s commercial campaign.
The AHCA “transparency website” suggests that passing Amendment 4 would lead to unintended consequences and expose women and children to health risks or remove regulations in place to protect them. However, the website does not provide examples of how.
Sjostrom said in his court writings that Floridians Protecting Freedom failed to provide evidence that AHCA’s campaign was harming potential voters and that ultimately “the fact finder must be each voter who will choose the information the voter finds convincing and render judgment on each ballot.”
As a result, the web page and the ads are allowed to remain.
“It's deeply inappropriate,” Eskamini said. ”It just shows how Gov. DeSantis and his allies have crossed a line from weaponizing government agencies.”
The judicial decision was a blow to the group’s momentum, but with only weeks to go before the election, Eskamani and Floridians Protecting Freedom are working to connect with as many unlikely voters as possible.
Rallying the campuses
In early October, Floridians Protecting Freedom reported that it had collected over 35,000 pledge-to-vote cards between August and September from students at four Florida universities. In total, the group said it has collected over 1 million pledges throughout the state.
Among those volunteers collecting pledge cards at UCF is Chastity Nix, a 21-year-old senior at UCF. She volunteers as a youth fellowship organizer. Nix started in August canvassing neighborhoods and going door to door, but she prefers connecting with her peers on campus. Nix said that for her, it’s about informing young black women, like herself, about what’s at stake.
“As a black woman, the medical attention that we receive is lower statistically, especially with the maternal mortality rate. So I want to make sure that black women, that our voices are heard and that they're aware that they can make this decision that can be better for them medically in the long run,” she said.
Nix agrees that young voters are key to passing the amendment, but she thinks that key is also their greatest challenge.
“I think that the support is high, but the actual amount of people that are going to show up and vote will probably be pretty low in comparison,” she said. “We haven't actually seen too much opposition. We've seen a lot of enthusiastic support, but not many of them know where to vote, when to vote, or how to vote,” Nix said.
One young voter Nix helped educate was 21-year-old Michael Ortiz, a UCF senior. He was walking to class when Nix and the Vote Yes on 4 volunteers caught his eye. He signed a pledge-to-vote card.
“I feel that it's more for the women to decide, rather than the government,” Ortiz said after speaking with Nix and learning about the amendment.
For the most part, Ortiz stays out of politics, but with women’s rights on the line, he feels compelled to get involved to stop government intervention.
“It's necessary,” he said. “I feel like it's my duty to intervene in this kind of politics.”
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