Anti-Abortion Activists Are Posing as Government Officials in South Dakota to Spread Ballot Measure Disinfo

South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley (R) said that an anti-abortion group whose members are allegedly posing as government officials has committed no criminal wrongdoing. (Photo: Shutterstock) On Monday, Amy Scott-Stoltz, president of the South Dakota League of Women Voters, received a phone call from someone who said they worked for the South Dakota Petition Integrity Committee and had gotten her information from the state secretary of state's office. The caller asked Scott-Stoltz about her decision to sign a petition in support of a ballot measure that would enshrine a right to abortion through the first trimester in the state constitution. "Getting a call like that in the middle of the day, I was a bit confused," Scott-Stoltz told Jezebel. She couldn't find information on the committee on the secretary of state's website and ended the call. But later that day she learned the South Dakota Petition Integrity Committee is a new anti-abortion group campaigning against the ballot measure that is run by Republican state Rep. Jon Hansen, who’s also co-chair of the anti-abortion Life Defense Fund. Despite its official-sounding name, the group isn't a government entity. Its volunteers have been calling voters who have signed their names in support of the measure, and have been insinuating that they work with the secretary of state's office. The timing is not accidental: Earlier this month, 55,000 signatures were submitted to get the measure on the November ballot (nearly twice the required amount). And the goal is clear: Confuse—or intimidate—these abortion rights supporters so that they rescind their support. Also on Monday, Secretary of State Monae Johnson’s office warned that a shady group was indeed calling individuals who signed in support of the measure. "Scammers are pushing the voters to challenge the Abortion Rights ballot measure petitions," Johnson, a Republican, said in a statement. Her office also said it’s “working with law enforcement to investigate the claims.” South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley (R) on Tuesday said his office had concluded that there is “no evidence of criminal wrongdoing after reviewing complaints and scripts used by the volunteers.” Hansen also denied to KELOLAND, a local news outlet, that volunteers with his group are falsely claiming to work for the secretary of state’s office; he said they are simply investigating whether voters who had signed the petition were coerced to do so under false premises: “Life Defense Fund has announced that we will be challenging the legal validity of the signatures obtained on the abortion amendment,” he said in an email to KELOLAND.  Even if the attorney general has concluded there's no law being broken here, this is still a supremely sketchy strategy being deployed by anti-abortion activists. Scott-Stoltz, who said she's heard from several other people who got similar calls, described the calls to petition signatories like her as "harassment." According to a Tuesday report in the South Dakota Searchlight, at least 700 voters have so far received these deceptive calls. Johnson's office told KELOLAND on Tuesday evening that it was still receiving reports from voters about phone calls regarding the abortion measure, and said that voters reporting these messages describe the callers as “rude, pushy, and threatening.” Rachel Soulek, director of the Division of Elections at the Office of the Secretary of State, said in an email to KELOLAND News on Monday that the deceptive calls are “coming from random numbers with a 605 area code," the only area code in South Dakota. Soulek added, “Our office has not and would not ever make any such calls and we are working with law enforcement to investigate the claims.” https://twitter.com/ProTruth4Life/status/1790370513769947263 In a…