Secretary of State Cord Byrd on Friday argued a judge should reject a lawsuit challenging directives by state elections officials that invalidated about 71,000 petition signatures for a proposed recreational-marijuana constitutional amendment.
Attorneys for Byrd pointed to issues such as trying to prevent petition fraud as they defended the directives, which invalidated about 42,000 petitions signed by what are known as “inactive” voters and nearly 29,000 petitions collected by out-of-state petition gatherers.
The Smart & Safe Florida political committee, which is trying to get the recreational marijuana proposal on the November ballot, filed the lawsuit Dec. 29 in Leon County circuit court. The legal battle is playing out as the committee faces a Feb. 1 deadline for submitting at least 880,062 valid petition signatures to the state.
The state Division of Elections website Monday evening showed a tally of 675,307 valid signatures, though Smart & Safe Florida said last week more than 1 million voters had signed petitions for the proposal, which would allow people ages 21 and older to use recreational marijuana.
Part of the lawsuit involves a Dec. 23 directive by the state to county elections supervisors to invalidate petitions signed by inactive voters. Such voters, the lawsuit said, remain registered to vote but are considered inactive because mail sent to them was undeliverable and their addresses weren’t confirmed. Inactive voters can be removed from the voter rolls if they don’t vote in two general elections, update their registrations or request vote-by-mail ballots.
Byrd’s attorneys Friday argued the directive to invalidate signatures of inactive voters was valid and cited state efforts to prevent petition fraud. In part, Friday’s filing said the Legislature has required elections supervisors to notify voters when their petition signatures are verified as valid, allowing voters to alert elections officials if they think fraud has occurred.
“(Permitting) petition forms submitted by inactive voters to be verified as valid would thwart the Legislature’s efforts to curb fraud in the initiative petition process. … Because a voter is placed in inactive status only after they have failed to respond to an address confirmation final notice from a supervisor of elections or their notice was returned as undeliverable, there is indicia that the voter no longer resides at the registered address or does not wish to engage in the electoral process,” Byrd’s attorneys argued. “Thus, if a petition validation notice … is sent to the registered address for the inactive voter, it is unlikely to be received or heeded and potentially fraudulent petitions may not be invalidated.”
But in the lawsuit, Smart & Safe Florida contended that inactive voters’ petitions should not be invalidated because they remain registered voters.
“The absurd result of the secretary’s directive is that ‘inactive’ voters can vote for the proposed amendment but cannot have their petitions counted to place the proposed amendment on the ballot to vote for it,” the lawsuit said.
The other part of the lawsuit, involving out-of-state petition gatherers, is tangled in a separate legal fight about a law passed in 2025.
The law prohibited non-Florida residents from collecting signatures for ballot proposals. Groups including Smart & Safe Florida challenged the law in federal court, and U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in July issued a preliminary injunction to block it.
After the injunction was issued, Smart & Safe Florida used out-of-state petition gatherers. But in September, a panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay of Walker’s injunction — effectively allowing the law to be enforced while the legal battle continues.
Smart & Safe Florida’s circuit-court lawsuit alleges that Byrd’s office improperly directed invalidating petitions collected by out-of-state petition gatherers during the period when the injunction was in effect. It said the out-of-state workers “were validly registered by the Division (of Elections) and lawfully gathered petitions during a roughly two-month period when a preliminary injunction was in force.”
But Byrd’s office on Friday pushed back, contending that Walker’s preliminary injunction “did not remove the relevant statutes from Florida law or render those circulators eligible, even on a temporary basis.”
Smart & Safe Florida also sought to pass a recreational marijuana amendment in 2024 but fell short of receiving the required 60 percent voter approval. Gov. Ron DeSantis spearheaded efforts to defeat the 2024 amendment.
In addition to needing to meet the Feb. 1 signature deadline, Smart & Safe Florida needs approval from the Florida Supreme Court of its proposed ballot wording. Attorney General James Uthmeier, who helped lead efforts to defeat the 2024 amendment, has urged the Supreme Court to reject the proposal.
