A proposed Florida constitutional amendment backed by Smart & Safe Florida to legalize adult recreational marijuana is set to miss the November 2026 ballot after the Florida Department of State said it had not met legal requirements, alongside 21 other citizen initiatives, according to the state’s announcement. The Department said none of the active proposed constitutional amendments by initiative petition qualified for the general election ballot after the signatures deadline passed on Sunday.
State officials said the Department of State released the determination after the deadline for signatures to qualify for the midterm election. Smart & Safe Florida said it believed the amendment would ultimately qualify once final, county-by-county validated totals were reported, but state records reflected a shortfall after petitions were processed.
In a statement attributed to Smart & Safe Florida, the group argued that the Secretary of State’s declaration was premature. “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,” the group said, adding that it believed it had submitted more than enough signatures when all counts are completed.
The AP report said the signature threshold for the marijuana amendment was 880,062 signatures and that state records showed the amendment was about 100,000 signatures short on Monday. Smart & Safe Florida said it submitted over 1.4 million signatures as part of its push, but the Department’s latest tally did not show enough validated support by the deadline.
The Department’s move to exclude all amendments follows what the report described as a yearslong clash over whether citizen-driven measures can reach Florida’s ballot, particularly as progressive organizers have sought to bypass what they characterize as a Republican-dominated Legislature. The AP account said Florida voters have used the initiative process to advance policies including raising the minimum wage and restoring voting rights for people with felony convictions.
The report also pointed to prior efforts involving DeSantis, saying that in 2024 the governor used state money and political influence to successfully campaign against efforts to legalize adult personal use of marijuana and expand abortion rights. The latest ballot-access decision comes after last May, when DeSantis signed a law creating what critics described as new hurdles for citizen initiatives.
According to the AP report, critics said the law makes citizen-driven ballot initiatives prohibitively expensive and effectively impossible for grassroots campaigns to qualify issues on the ballot. As an example of what groups expect the change to mean for future election activity, the report said a campaign to expand Medicaid announced it would delay its push to get the question on the ballot until 2028.
While the Department of State’s Sunday deadline and Monday signature totals close the door on these amendments for the 2026 ballot, Smart & Safe Florida’s response indicates the marijuana campaign intends to dispute the timing of the Secretary of State’s determination as final county-by-county totals are completed.