Florida election officials appear to have short-changed an adult-use cannabis legalization campaign by more than 54,000 valid signatures.
Local election officials from roughly half of Florida’s 67 counties validated more signatures for Smart & Safe Florida’s initiative petition than what state officials gave those counties credit for, according to a Cannabis Business Times analysis of Florida’s county supervisors of elections’ websites.
The state-versus-county discrepancies for valid signature tallies come after Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd’s office announced Feb. 1 that Smart & Safe Florida’s proposed constitutional amendment to allow those 21 and older to access cannabis failed to meet the signature requirements for placement on the 2026 General Election ballot.
According to the Florida Division of Elections’ website, Smart & Safe Florida filed 783,592 valid signatures ahead of the Feb. 1 deadline, coming 96,470 signatures short of the 880,062 needed to qualify for the ballot.
However, with the extra 54,000-plus signatures reported by local election officials and another 70,646 disqualified signatures being contested in court, Smart & Safe Florida could overcome that shortfall (more on the lawsuit below).
Smart & Safe Florida organizers challenged the state’s valid signature tally on Feb. 1, with a campaign spokesperson telling Florida Politics that the Division of Elections’ website doesn’t match what the 67 county supervisors of elections verified at the local level.
“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 spokesperson said. “We submitted over 1.4 million signatures and believe when they are all counted, we will have more than enough to make the ballot.”
The 67 county supervisors of elections’ websites now show that local officials validated more than 833,000 signatures and deemed roughly 900,000 invalid, meaning they reviewed more than 1.7 million signatures from Smart & Safe Florida.
At the time of Byrd’s Feb. 1 declaration that the campaign failed, some county supervisors of elections had yet to post signature tallies from their final week’s reporting periods.
Under Florida Statute Section 100.371(15), Byrd is responsible for “the purely ministerial duty of calculating the total number of verified signatures,” based on valid counts from the 67 supervisors of elections, Leon County Judge Jonathan E. Sjostrom ruled last month.
This prompted CBT’s 67-county analysis.
Nearly 48,000 of the 54,000 valid signatures from county websites that were not reflected in the state’s tally came from five counties: Broward, Seminole, Pinellas, Polk and Alachua.
CBT reached out to Byrd’s office, seeking comment from the secretary of state on the discrepancies in the tallies of valid signatures. More than 30 counties in Florida included these state-versus-local discrepancies.
CBT also reached out to Smart & Safe Florida, as well as the supervisors of elections from Broward, Seminole, Pinellas, Polk and Alachua counties.
"Our numbers were finalized in time for the deadline of February 1, 2026, and submitted to the state," Broward County Public Information Officer Lisa Lee Arneaud said.
State officials underreported Broward County's tally by 16,044 signatures on the Florida Division of Elections' website. CBT asked Arneaud about this discrepancy.
"You would have to direct that question to the state," she said. "The numbers I presented to you are the numbers we reported."
Seminole County Supervisor Amy Pennock said, "Our final numbers as of the deadline are accurate on the website; however, after the deadline, we were notified of revocations that resulted in an adjustment to 28,977 in validated petitions."
That adjustment increased the county's total by 181 valid signatures (from 28,796 to 28,977). Meanwhile, state officials underreported Seminole County's final tally by 12,165 signatures.
"I can only speak to my numbers and meeting the deadline," Pennock said.
In Pinellas County, Supervisor of Elections Communications Director Ashley McKnight-Taylor said, "We have completed our petition processing, and our final numbers are reflected in the report on our website. Regarding the discrepancy between our numbers and what the Division of Elections is reporting, you would need to contact them directly, as we cannot speak to their processes and/or website content."
State officials underreported Pinellas County's final tally by 11,083 signatures.
In Polk County, Human Resources Director Linda Lacourse said, "The figures are finalized on our website."
State officials underreported Polk County's final tally by 5,171 signatures.
A spokesperson from Alachua County didn't immediately respond.
While the 54,000-plus valid signatures not reflected in the state’s total would not overcome Smart & Safe Florida’s 96,470-signature shortfall, it would put the campaign within distance of crossing the required threshold should it win its lawsuit currently challenging the state’s disqualification of another 70,646 signatures.
CBT reached out to Smart & Safe Florida’s legal team at Stearns Weaver Miller, asking about the significance of the state-versus-local discrepancies paired with the lawsuit: 54,000 plus 70,646 signatures not yet included in the state’s total would give the campaign more than 908,000 valid signatures overall, more than enough to qualify for the November 2026 ballot.
The lawsuit stems from when Byrd directed county election officials in September to invalidate 28,752 petitions collected by non-U.S. citizens or non-Florida residents, and, in December, another 41,894 petitions signed by voters designated as “inactive” under state law – 70,646 total.
A three-judge panel for Florida’s 1st District Court of Appeal ruled in favor of the state on Jan. 23 in disqualifying all 70,646 signatures in question.
However, Smart & Safe Florida entered a post-disposition motion on Jan. 25 for a rehearing en banc, meaning the campaign is asking the full 12-judge 1st District to rehear the case, with the campaign’s legal battle having the potential to eventually end up in the state’s Supreme Court.
In a separate lawsuit, Sjostrom – the circuit court judge in Leon County – ordered the state to update its signature count on the Division of Elections website after nearly two months of inaction, ruling that one more end-of-week deadline was approaching on Feb. 1.
Now that the state updated its website on Feb. 1, and with Byrd declaring that Smart & Safe Florida failed to meet its signature requirements, it’s unclear if the Division of Elections will update its website again to further reflect the finalized tallies from the 67 county supervisors of elections.
Yet the state’s 783,592-signature tally still includes an asterisk: “The statewide and congressional totals are the totals reported to the Division of Elections by the supervisors of elections and do not reflect the secretary’s determination of the total number of verified valid signatures.”
Furthermore, according to state officials, the supervisors of elections may still be “correcting their records pursuant” to the lawsuits.
“Such corrections may not yet be reflected,” according to the state.
