Smart and Safe Florida was looking to get an adult-use recreational marijuana amendment on the 2026 ballot.
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- A petition group aiming to get recreational marijuana on Florida’s 2026 ballot says the state’s announcement of its failure is premature.
- The group, Smart and Safe Florida, believes it will meet the signature requirement once all submitted petitions are counted.
- Florida’s Secretary of State announced that the group failed to meet the nearly 881,000 verified signature threshold by the February 1 deadline.
A petition group pushing to get recreational marijuana on Florida’s 2026 November statewide ballot is saying the state’s announcement of its failure to gather enough signatures is “premature.”
Secretary of State Cord Byrd announced Feb. 1 that all 22 citizen-led proposed amendments to the state’s constitution failed to meet Florida law’s signature requirements.
Smart and Safe Florida, the group behind adult-use recreational pot, pushed back.
“We believe the declaration by the Secretary of State is premature, as the final and complete county by county totals for validated petitions are not yet reported,” a spokesperson for Smart and Safe Florida said. “We submitted over 1.4 million signatures and believe, when they are all counted, we will have more than enough to make the ballot.”
The group needed to have met 880,062 signatures by Feb. 1, but the Florida Division of Elections website only listed 783,592 verified signatures. For months, the number was slowly trickling upward, since the group had more than 662,000 verified in November.
The pot group faced several challenges while seeking to get its petition on the ballot, all stemming from a law the governor approved last year (HB 1205). It brought stricter penalties and deadlines for petition groups, and with it came increased costs to verify petitions by supervisors of elections, effectively making it more costly to gather signatures.
The law is currently being challenged in federal court by a number of petition groups, including Smart and Safe Florida, saying it restricts core political speech. A trial begins Feb. 9.
More: Legal battles could delay Florida recreational marijuana amendment
The law went into effect July 1; a federal judge agreed one provision restricting nonresidents and noncitizens from volunteering from gathering signatures would “impose a severe burden on political expression.”
U.S. District Judge Mark Walker ruled that state officials couldn’t enforce that part, but a divided appeals court promptly upheld the law, disagreeing with arguments of free speech violations.
More: Judge blocks part of new Florida petition law, says noncitizens can gather signatures
But that’s just one hurdle.
Smart and Safe Florida also was entangled in another lawsuit alleging that Byrd violated state-required procedures and was blocking the group’s ballot measure. They also filed against Byrd on a separate issue, accusing him of seeking to invalidate 200,000 petitions without legal basis, but a circuit judge sided with him.
The DeSantis administration had continually lambasted the marijuana proposal when it was on the ballot in the 2024 elections. He held events condemning the ballot measure and contended that Florida lawmakers wouldn’t be able to set guidelines on marijuana use after it passes.
More recently, Florida’s attorney general escalated its fight against the recreational pot campaign, by accusing Smart and Safe Florida of submitting fraudulent petitions and failing to inform law enforcement. The group countered, saying they complied with state law and reported any suspicions to the Secretary of State’s office.
Attorney General James Uthmeier reacted tongue-in-cheek on social media shortly after Byrd’s announcement, posting a GIF that looked like the opening of a Looney Tunes cartoon, but instead saying, “You hate to see it!”
This reporting content is supported by a partnership with Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. USA Today Network-Florida First Amendment reporter Stephany Matat is based in Tallahassee, Fla. She can be reached at SMatat@gannett.com. On X: @stephanymatat.
