Florida recreational marijuana amendment still short of signatures as state updates count after lawsuit
Attributing the delay to scrutiny of potentially invalid petition signatures, the state Division of Elections on Thursday updated signature numbers on its website for a proposed recreational-marijuana constitutional amendment after being sued by backers of the initiative.
The agency's website showed that Smart & Safe Florida, the political committee behind the measure, had submitted 714,888 valid signatures as of Thursday — roughly 40,000 more than shown in the previous update two months ago but still far short of the 880,062 signatures needed for placement on the November ballot. The committee also must meet signature thresholds in congressional districts to put the issue before voters.
The totals reported on the state's website "do not reflect the secretary's determination of the total number of verified valid signatures," a message on the site said, referring to Secretary of State Cord Byrd.
In addition, county supervisors of elections "are currently correcting their records" because of court rulings requiring some signatures to be invalidated and because of other requirements, "e.g., voter/circulator ineligibility, inactive voter, revoked circulator, voter notice of fraud," the message said.
Supporters accuse DeSantis administration of violating Florida petition law
Racing against a Feb. 1 deadline to submit the required numbers of signatures, Smart & Safe Florida last week filed a lawsuit asking a Leon County circuit judge to force the state elections office to update its website to reflect the number of valid signatures vetted by county supervisors of elections.
The lawsuit accused Byrd's office of violating a state law requiring state elections officials to determine the number of valid petition signatures and publicly post the information on a weekly basis, from Dec. 1 through Feb. 1.
The Division of Elections website on Tuesday showed that Smart & Safe Florida had submitted 675,307 valid signatures, a figure that had remained static since Nov. 23, although county supervisors posted information showing additional petitions had been verified and sent to the state over the past two months.
Judge Jonathan Sjostrom on Tuesday set an expedited schedule for briefing in the lawsuit, leading lawyers for Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration to file documents Thursday saying the website had been updated — with the caveat.
In a declaration dated Thursday, state Division of Elections Director Maria Matthews said that her office stopped posting updated numbers after a Nov. 25 court decision upholding a directive she issued requiring supervisors to scrap petitions that did not include the full text of the proposed constitutional amendment. The committee had mailed the petitions to voters, and the state alleged the signatures were "not obtained legally."
The ruling affected roughly 200,000 petition signatures that are not included in the total posted on the state's website, according to Smart & Safe Florida.
"Because of the potential number of petitions submitted on unapproved forms that would need to be reverified as invalid, it was clear that the valid signature numbers posted on the division's website were vastly inaccurate. Accordingly, shortly after the court's ruling, the division paused the posting of valid signature numbers on its website until accurate numbers could be reported," Matthews' declaration said.
Matthews also pointed to a ruling by Sjostrom in a separate lawsuit filed by Smart & Safe Florida alleging that Matthews' office improperly directed supervisors to invalidate petitions signed by what are known as "inactive" voters and to scrap signatures obtained by out-of-state petition gatherers.
Judge splits, prompting appeals from state and initiative supporters
In a split decision on Jan. 15, Sjostrom found that the state improperly directed the invalidation of about 42,000 petitions signed by inactive voters. But he upheld the directive to invalidate nearly 29,000 petitions collected by signature gatherers who weren't residents of Florida.
Both sides appealed Sjostrom's ruling to the 1st District Court of Appeal, which on Friday granted a state request to put on hold the part of Sjostrom's ruling about inactive voters. Earlier, the Tallahassee-based appeals court refused to send the case to the Florida Supreme Court for expedited review. Smart & Safe Florida is appealing the part of the ruling about non-resident petition gatherers.
According to Matthews' declaration, county supervisors of elections "have not completed reverification. If either party prevails in the appeal, the supervisors will be required to make additional corrections."
Wrangling over the hotly contested proposal to allow people ages 21 and older to use recreational marijuana also is escalating in other ways. Attorney General James Uthmeier has been flexing his authority to try to block the measure, which is similar to a proposal that fell short of receiving the required 60 percent voter approval in 2024.
Uthmeier, who helped DeSantis fight the 2024 proposal, on Friday announced the arrest of a Titusville woman, Teagen Marie Targhuhanuchi, on charges related to allegedly filling out and submitting fraudulent voter registrations after obtaining personal information gleaned from recreational-marijuana petitions. In a news release announcing the arrest, Uthmeier linked Targhuhanuchi's alleged wrongdoing to Smart & Safe Florida, which has been heavily funded by Trulieve, a major player in the state's medical-marijuana industry.
"There is no excuse for a mega marijuana corporation and its affiliates to fraudulently hijack Florida's Constitution," Uthmeier said in the news release. "This behavior is a direct attack on election integrity, and we will hold anyone who commits or participates in these crimes fully accountable."
On Tuesday, Uthmeier announced a "major escalation" in the Office of Statewide Prosecution's investigation into election fraud related to the recreational-marijuana signature-gathering efforts.
Uthmeier's office launched 46 criminal investigations and issued four subpoenas seeking records from Smart & Safe Florida and its contractors and subcontractors about potentially fraudulent petitions, according to a news release.
In addition, Uthmeier is urging the Florida Supreme Court to prevent the recreational-marijuana proposal from going before voters, calling it misleading and "fatally flawed."
The Supreme Court is poised to decide whether the proposal meets legal standards to go on the ballot. Smart & Safe Florida last week filed a brief arguing that the ballot initiative fulfills legal requirements and should be placed on the ballot.