State Department announces no citizen initiatives made 2026 ballot, but pot campaign says that’s premature

Florida’s State Department announced no citizen initiatives turned in enough verified before a Sunday deadline to appear on the 2026 ballot.

But the campaign behind a proposed recreational marijuana ballot measure believes county elections offices may have submitted enough verified signatures, a dispute that may end up in court.

For now, it appears no citizen-proposed constitutional amendments will appear on Florida’s statewide ballot for the first election cycle in decades.

“All twenty-two active proposed constitutional amendments by initiative petitions failed to meet the requirements of Florida law for placement on the 2026 General Election ballot,” reads an announcement from the Department of State.

The Smart & Safe Florida campaign was making a massive push to reach the required 880,062 verified signatures to appear on the ballot. As of Sunday evening, a state website listed 783,592 signatures accepted by the state.

That’s about 23,000 more than the website listed as of Friday. But even at that point, officials at Smart & Safe said county elections offices had verified more. Their tally showed county offices had verified more than 779,000 ballots as of Jan. 23.

“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,” reads a statement from a spokesperson for Smart & Safe. “We submitted over 1.4 million signatures and believe when they are all counted, we will have more than enough to make the ballot.”

Officials in several Florida county elections offices confirmed to Florida Politics that workers would process petitions through 5 p.m. Sunday, the state’s deadline for having all petitions validated.

The marijuana campaign has seen a series of setbacks as the state alleged fraud by petitioners and tossed out numerous forms for a variety of administrative reasons.

Some 200,000 petitions were tossed on grounds they did not include the entire text of the constitutional amendment. After a Leon County judge upheld that State department decision, Smart & Safe elected not to appeal the decision out of time concerns. But organizers have taken to the state to court two other times over ballot access as well.

Another 43,000 forms were tossed because they were signed by voters classified as “inactive,” meaning they are still registered to vote but have not done so recently.

Additionally, some 34,000 were thrown out because the state said they were collected by out-of-state gatherers, though campaign organizers said they were collected and submitted during a time when a law forbidding the practice had been stayed by courts.

But Florida officials have also alleged fraudulent behavior by petitioners.

Attorney General James Uthmeier in January announced the arrest of a Titusville petition gatherer, for example. Teagen Marie Targhuhanuchi was booked on charges she gathered signatures on Smart & Safe petitions, then used information to fill out voter registration applications. She faces 12 charges of identity theft and of submitting fraudulent voter information.

While organizations launched efforts to get 22 separate Florida constitutional amendments on the ballot, only a few saw any serious effort to make a Feb. 1 deadline for the Midterms.

A proposal to require a Medicaid expansion submitted 75,855 verified signatures tallied by the state. Florida Decides Healthcare (FDH) announced on Sunday it has already launched a new effort to land a measure on the 2028 ballot.

Another campaign hoped to put a right to clean and healthy waters in the state constitution, but only 51,261 petitions were ever accepted by the state.

Every other proposal failed to reach 1,000 petitions before organizers abandoned efforts for 2026, in part because of a bevy of new laws heavily restricted the collection of petitions.

In July, a new law (HB 1205) went into effect placing a series of new hurdles for any citizen campaigns for Florida ballot measures. Those include a requirement to register all signature gatherers with the state and requiring a two-hour training course and imposing a 10-day timeline to turn in signed petitions.