Florida Officials Reset Marijuana Campaign’s Signatures To Zero For Legalization Ballot Initiative As Legal Challenges Persist

A Florida campaign seeking to put marijuana legalization on the ballot is
facing another complication as it continues to litigate the status of its
2026 signature drive. Under a new election law, the hundreds of thousands
of signatures activists already collected for this year will not be carried
over into the 2028 cycle.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bill into law last year that makes several
fundamental changes to the ballot process in a way that advocates say
significantly undermines their ability to put citizen initiatives before
voters, including a policy to reset the signature clock for each election
cycle.

Accordingly, the state Division of Elections page for the Smart & Safe
Florida cannabis measure now shows 0 verified signatures for the 2028
ballot, erasing the nearly 800,000 signatures the campaign gathered to put
legalization on the ballot this November. Officials said activists failed
to meet the signature threshold for this upcoming election, but that matter
is still being separately challenged in the state Supreme Court.

“The new law means all signatures expire for the new cycle,” a Smart & Safe
Florida spokesperson told Marijuana Moment on Monday, calling it “one more
way they screwed over voters.”

Other changes to the state election law includes new policies creating
stricter formatting rules for ballot petitions, registration requirements
for signature collectors, limitations on the number of ballot issues per
campaign committee and more.

The cannabis campaign hasn’t given up its bid for the 2026 ballot just yet,
however. And so depending on the outcome of the pending litigation, it
could theoretically avoid navigating the updated election rules for 2028.

Smart & Safe Florida recently submitted an appeal to the state Supreme
Court concerning the invalidation of about 71,000 signatures for its 2026
petition, for example.

While the court agreed to close a separate case involving a legal review
into the ballot measure from Smart & Safe Florida, it’s now been handed
another case challenging the earlier mass signature invalidation.

Back in December, advocates filed a lawsuit in the Leon County circuit
court, claiming Secretary of State Cord Byrd (R) unlawfully directed county
election officials to invalidate about 42,000 signatures from so-called
“inactive” voters and roughly 29,000 signatures collected by out-of-state
petitioners.

That lawsuit came after another court upheld a previous decision to strike
about 200,000 signatures that the state said were invalid because the
petitions didn’t include the full text of the proposed initiative. The
campaign contested the legal interpretation, but it declined to appeal the
decision based on their confidence they’d collected enough signatures to
make up the difference.

Smart & Safe Florida has generally disputed the secretary of state’s
signature count, asserting the campaign submitted over 1.4 million
petitions—hundreds of thousands more than the 880,062 valid signatures
required to go before voters.

In a recent filing with the Supreme Court, Attorney General James Uthmeier
(R) said his office was withdrawing its earlier request for a legal review
in the constitutionality of the proposed cannabis initiative because the
state claimed the campaign submitted an insufficient number of signed
petitions. The last count, according to the secretary of state’s office,
was 783,592 validated signatures.

In its reply brief, Smart & Safe Florida said the secretary of state’s
office made a determination that the campaign didn’t satisfy requirements
for ballot placement based on a “conclusion that the Sponsor failed to meet
the requisite signature threshold in light of the invalidations that the
Sponsor is contesting.”

Ahead of the signature turn-in, Florida’s attorney general and several
business and anti-marijuana groups urged the state Supreme Court to block
the cannabis initiative, calling it “fatally flawed” and unconstitutional.

The Florida Chamber of Commerce, Florida Legal Foundation and Judge Frank
Shepherd filed a separate joint brief stating that the parties remain
“especially vigilant about the abuse of the citizen initiative process by
out-of-state interests that think of Florida as just another market and the
citizen initiative process as just another means of exploiting that market.”

The Florida Chamber of Commerce has consistently opposed attempts to move
forward with adult-use legalization, even as its own polling has shown
majority support for the reform.

The campaign fought several legal battles this cycle to ensure that its
initiative is able to qualify for ballot placement.

Last month, the state attorney general’s office opened dozens of criminal
investigations and submitted subpoenas requesting records from Smart & Safe
Florida and its contractors and subcontractors over alleged fraud related
to the petitioning effort.

Activists said in November that they’d collected more than one million
signatures to put the cannabis measure on the ballot, but it’s also challenged
officials at the state Supreme Court level over delays the certification
process, arguing that the review of the ballot content and summary should
have moving forward months ago when it reached an initial signature
threshold. The state then agreed to move forward with the processing.

The governor campaigned heavily against an earlier version of the
legalization proposal, which received a majority of voters in 2024 but not
enough to meet the 60 percent threshold required to pass a constitutional
amendment. Former Attorney General Ashley Moody (R) unsuccessfully
contested the prior initiative in the courts.

Last March, meanwhile, two Democratic members of Congress representing
Florida asked the federal government to investigate what they described as
“potentially unlawful diversion” of millions in state Medicaid funds via a
group with ties to DeSantis. The money was used to fight against a citizen
ballot initiative, vehemently opposed by the governor, that would have
legalized marijuana for adults.

The lawmakers’ letter followed allegations that a $10 million donation from
a state legal settlement was improperly made to the Hope Florida
Foundation, which later sent the money to two political nonprofits, which
in turn sent $8.5 million to a campaign opposing Amendment 3.

The governor said last February that the newest marijuana legalization
measure is in “big time trouble” with the state Supreme Court, predicting
it would be blocked from going before voters this year.

“There’s a lot of different perspectives on on marijuana,” DeSantis said.
“It should not be in our Constitution. If you feel strongly about it, you
have elections for the legislature. Go back candidates that you believe
will be able to deliver what your vision is on that.”

“But when you put these things in the Constitution—and I think, I mean, the
way they wrote, there’s all kinds of things going on in here. I think it’s
going to have big time trouble getting through the Florida Supreme Court,”
he said.

The latest initiative was filed with the secretary of state’s office just
months after the initial version failed during the November 2024
election—despite an endorsement from President Donald Trump.

Smart & Safe Florida expressed optimism that the revised version would
succeed in 2026. The campaign—which in the last election cycle received
tens of millions of dollars from cannabis industry stakeholders,
principally the multi-state operator Trulieve—incorporated certain changes
into the new version that seem responsive to criticism opponents raised
during the 2024 push.

For example, it now specifically states that the “smoking and vaping of
marijuana in any public place is prohibited.”Another section asserts that
the legislature would need to approve rules dealing with the “regulation of
the time, place, and manner of the public consumption of marijuana.”

In 2023, the governor accurately predicted that the 2024 cannabis measure
from the campaign would survive a legal challenge from the state attorney
general. It’s not entirely clear why he feels this version would face a
different outcome.

While there’s uncertainty around how the state’s highest court will
navigate the measure, a poll released last February showed overwhelming
bipartisan voter support for the reform—with 67 percent of Florida voters
backing legalization, including 82 percent of Democrats, 66 percent of
independents and 55 percent of Republicans.


*— Marijuana Moment is tracking hundreds of cannabis, psychedelics and drug
policy bills in state legislatures and Congress this year. Patreon
supporters pledging at least $25/month get access to our interactive maps,
charts and hearing calendar so they don’t miss any developments.*


*Learn more about our marijuana bill tracker and become a supporter on
Patreon to get access. —*

In the background, a recent poll from a Trump-affiliated research firm
found that nearly 9 in 10 Florida voters say they should have the right to
decide to legalize marijuana in the state.

Meanwhile, earlier this month, Florida senators approved an amended bill to
increase the amount of medical marijuana a registered patient can buy and
slash the fee for medical cannabis identification cards for military
veterans.

The vote came after the Senate Regulated Industries Committee passed separate
legislation to ban smoking or vaping marijuana in public places. Rep. Alex
Andrade (R) is sponsoring a similar bill to ban public cannabis smoking in
the House.

*Here’s an overview of other pending Florida marijuana bills:*

- A House lawmaker is sponsoring a bill to legalize recreational
marijuana that also aims to break up what he calls “monopolies” in the
state’s current medical cannabis program by revising the business licensing
structure.
- Another representative’s bill would protect the parental rights of
medical cannabis patients, preventing them from losing custody of their
children for using their medicine in accordance with state law.
- A senator is sponsoring a bill to legalize home cultivation of
marijuana for registered medical cannabis patients in the state.

*Photo courtesy of Chris Wallis // Side Pocket Images.*

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For Legalization Ballot Initiative As Legal Challenges Persist appeared
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