Florida says pot ballot referendum is dead, but organizers say not so fast

Jeffrey Schweers, Orlando Sentinel on Feb 2, 2026

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

TALLAHASSEE —Florida’s Secretary of State has declared dead a 2026 ballot measure to legalize pot, saying it failed to get enough petition signatures to make the ballot — but supporters said Monday the announcement is premature.

Cord Byrd, an appointee of legalization opponent Gov. Ron DeSantis, sent a memo to the media at 6:41 p.m. Sunday, an hour and 41 minutes after the deadline for submitting petition signatures for the 2026 ballot had passed. His memo said all 22 proposed constitutional amendments, including the marijuana one, failed to meet the state requirements to get on this year’s ballot.

Not so fast, said the Smart & Safe Florida organization pushing the marijuana measure: It submitted more than 1.4 million signatures, about 60% over the required number, said Glenn Burhans Jr., general counsel for the group. Once they are all counted, he said, “we will have more than enough to make ballot.”

“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,” Burhans said via text.

State law says all signatures validated by 5 p.m. Feb. 1 must be counted.

State elections officials didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The dispute is only the latest sharp conflict over qualifying the initiative, a process that began almost immediately after a previous ballot measure failed in 2024. After tightening the rules governing petitions, DeSantis and his allies have fought at every turn to block the proposed 2026 measure’s path to the ballot.

Smart & Safe Florida is the group pushing to legalize marijuana and came close two years ago when about 56% of voters said yes to making it legal. The state requires 60% voter approval, however, to approve a constitutional amendment.

DeSantis and Attorney General James Uthmeier are opposed to legalizing marijuana and worked to thwart the 2024 ballot amendment using more than $30 million in state resources. That money included a $10 million donation to Hope Florida — the charity that is the pet project of First Lady Casey DeSantis — that wound up in the coffers of two political committees opposed to its passage.

Uthmeier, a central figure in the defeat of that amendment two years ago, reacted to Byrd’s announcement on social media with a “You Hate to See it!” written over an old Looney Tunes logo.

The state requires 880,062 valid signatures to reserve a spot on the November general ballot. The Department of State’s website shows 783,592 valid petitions after Byrd tossed out some 70,000 petitions.

Safe & Smart faced fresh challenges and increased costs associated to get the measure on this year’s ballot, thanks to a new law that imposed more restrictions and tighter deadlines for petition gathering.

The group also claims Byrd effectively slowed down the verification process when his office sent a memo out to all 67 county election supervisors, copied to Uthmeier. The memo said election supervisors had to verify petition signatures, then send a letter to each person whose signature was verified and do it “on the same day,” if possible, language that is not in state law.

Election supervisors in Central Florida, and around the state, reported the new rule confused voters.

Byrd also sent members of his Office of Election Crimes and Security to Orange and Broward counties to audit marijuana ballot petitions.

A spokesman for Orange County Supervisor of Elections Karen Castor Dentel confirmed the office received an email “regarding a particular subset of the marijuana-referendum petitions earlier this month. We also had a visit from the Office of Election Crimes and Security last week to audit the referenced petitions in-person. ”

Smart & Safe and other groups challenged some of Florida’s new petition rules in court but were not successful.

The group said it would have met the signature threshold if the state hadn’t rejected close to 300,000 signatures — all of them based on technicalities.

The state tossed out 200,000 on the basis that they didn’t include the full text of the amendment, which Smart & Safe Florida chose not to challenge because it was running out of time.

The group did challenge Byrd’s decision to invalidate 42,000 signatures by people classified as “inactive” voters and nearly 29,000 signatures collected by workers who are not Florida residents.

A Leon Circuit Judge ruled the petitions by inactive voters shouldn’t be invalidated but said the state was right to invalidate the petitions gathered by non-residents. An appeals court overturned the ruling on inactive voters and let the ruling on non-residents stand.

Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said the DeSantis administration is deliberately trying to silence voters.

“We’ve seen this governor not only create his own police force to intimidate voters who participate in petition initiatives, but also steal millions of state dollars from children and families to control the outcome of elections,” Fried said in a news release. “Now they’re denying ballot access while redrawing maps to favor the Republican Party, because they’ve seen how Democrats have performed since Trump has taken office.”

_____