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Florida Says No Citizen Initiatives Qualified for 2026 Ballot as Marijuana Drive Falls Short

Smart & Safe Florida calls the ruling premature, signaling a court fight.

Overview

  • Florida’s Department of State announced that all 22 citizen-initiated amendments failed to meet legal requirements for the 2026 ballot.
  • The Division of Elections lists 783,592 validated signatures for the recreational marijuana measure, below the 880,062 needed.
  • Smart & Safe Florida says it submitted more than 1.4 million signatures and contends county-by-county verification totals are incomplete, with further litigation expected.
  • State officials invalidated large batches of petitions for technical issues, including about 200,000 lacking full text, roughly 43,000 tied to inactive voters, and around 34,000 collected by non-Florida circulators, while fraud investigations continue.
  • Other drives fell well short, including 75,855 validated signatures for Medicaid expansion and about 51,261 for a clean-waters proposal, as a 2025 law (HB 1205) imposed new registration, training and timing rules for petition circulators.