Overview
- Florida’s Department of State announced that all 22 citizen-initiated constitutional amendments failed to meet signature requirements by the Feb. 1 deadline.
- Smart & Safe Florida, backing recreational marijuana, called the declaration premature and says it submitted more than 1.4 million petitions that it believes will qualify once fully tallied.
- State records listed 783,592 validated signatures for the marijuana measure on Monday, placing it about 100,000 short of the 880,062 threshold.
- Officials invalidated large batches of petitions for missing the full amendment text, signatures from inactive voters, and use of non-Florida circulators, with court rulings upholding key disqualifications.
- Attorney General James Uthmeier pledged continued fraud prosecutions after a petition gatherer’s arrest, and a 2025 law added training, registration and 10-day submission rules that campaigns say hampered drives.