Signatures to back Florida recreational-marijuana constitutional amendment reaches 760,002

Amid a legal battle about updating the numbers, the state Division of Elections website Monday said backers of a proposed recreational-marijuana constitutional amendment had submitted 760,002 valid petition signatures as they try to put the measure on the November ballot.

That was up from 714,888 valid signatures shown on the website Sunday.

The Smart & Safe Florida political committee faces a Feb. 1 deadline for submitting 880,062 valid signatures statewide and also meeting signature thresholds in congressional districts.

The committee filed a lawsuit this month in Leon County circuit court after the number of valid signatures shown on the Division of Elections website remained at 675,307 for about two months.

The Division of Elections last week upped the number to 714,888, before the latest increase to 760,002. The lawsuit contends that the Division of Elections violated a requirement, set in state law, to update signature totals on a weekly basis from Dec. 1 through Feb. 1.

The committee’s lawyers argued that, without updated numbers, “Smart & Safe is essentially flying blind as to its ballot placement status and is left guessing where it needs to deploy its assets to ensure it makes both the statewide requirement and the congressional district requirement.”

But the Division of Elections attributed the delay to scrutiny of potentially invalid signatures. Smart & Safe Florida also filed a lawsuit in late December challenging state directives to county supervisors of elections to invalidate about 70,000 petition signatures.

A panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal on Friday sided with Secretary of State Cord Byrd in that case.

The proposed constitutional amendment would allow people ages 21 and older to use recreational marijuana.

A similar proposal fell short of receiving the required 60 percent voter approval in 2024, after Gov. Ron DeSantis helped lead efforts to defeat it.