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FLORIDA - Smart & Safe Florida, a political committee advocating for recreational marijuana legalization, has filed a lawsuit against Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd and Leon County Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley over a dispute involving roughly 200,000 petition signatures.
The signatures represent about one-third of the verified petitions collected so far for the 2026 ballot initiative, which requires approximately 880,000 valid signatures by February 1st.
The dispute centers on mail-in petitions sent directly to voters earlier this year.
Each mailer included two petitions, a prepaid return envelope, and a campaign card.
While the mailers included a link to the full text of the proposed amendment on the back, they only contained a summary of the amendment itself.
Maria Matthews, director of the Florida Division of Elections, instructed county supervisors that these petitions should be invalidated, citing rules requiring the petition layout to be approved and the full text of the amendment to be “provided or displayed” to voters before signing.
Smart & Safe Florida argues that Florida law does not require the full text to be displayed and that the Division of Elections is improperly creating new criteria for validating signatures.
The campaign maintains the link to the full amendment text was prominently displayed and that the placement of the link does not alter the petition layout.
This initiative would allow adults to legally purchase and possess marijuana while including provisions prohibiting public consumption.
Smart & Safe Florida has raised about $26 million for this effort, primarily from the marijuana company Trulieve.
The campaign is also involved in a separate lawsuit challenging recent legislative changes to the petition process, which it claims make ballot initiatives more costly and less accessible.