New Analysis Finds 54,000 Valid Cannabis Signatures Missing From Florida’s State Count

Florida’s fight over a 2026 adult‑use cannabis initiative took another turn this week after a new analysis revealed that state election officials may have undercounted more than 54,000 valid petition signatures submitted by the Smart & Safe Florida campaign. The discrepancies, identified by Cannabis Business Times through a review of all 67 county supervisors of elections’ public data, raise fresh questions about how the state tallied signatures before declaring the measure had fallen short.

On February 1, Secretary of State Cord Byrd announced that the campaign had failed to meet the 880,062 valid signatures required to qualify for the November 2026 ballot. The Florida Division of Elections reported 783,592 valid signatures, leaving the campaign nearly 100,000 short.

County Data Shows 54,000 More Petition Signatures

Data from the state’s counties, however, show that thousands more signatures were validated by county election officials. Local officials collectively validated more than 833,000 signatures after reviewing 1.7 million. That puts the state’s reported total more than 54,000 signatures fewer than what counties say they verified.

Nearly 48,000 of those missing signatures came from just five counties: Broward, Seminole, Pinellas, Polk and Alachua. Broward officials said their numbers were finalized and submitted on time, yet the state’s website underreported the county’s valid signature count by more than 16,000. Seminole County Supervisor Amy Pennock confirmed her office’s totals were accurate as of the deadline, even after a small post‑deadline adjustment for revocations. The state’s tally still came in more than 12,000 signatures lower than Seminole’s final count. Officials in the other counties did not immediately respond to requests from Cannabis Business Times for comment.

The discrepancies alone would not fully close the gap between the campaign’s reported total and the state’s threshold. But Smart & Safe Florida is also challenging the disqualification of another 70,646 signatures in court. If the campaign prevails, the combined total of undercounted and contested signatures would push the initiative above the required threshold and onto the 2026 ballot.

The campaign has maintained since February 1 that the state acted prematurely. A spokesperson said the Division of Elections’ website does not match the verified totals submitted by county supervisors and that the campaign’s more than 1.4 million submitted signatures should be enough once all are properly accounted for.

A Leon County judge has already ruled that Byrd’s role in the process is strictly ministerial, meaning the state must rely on county‑verified numbers. That ruling is now central to the campaign’s legal challenge and to the broader debate over whether Florida’s initiative process is being fairly administered.

Cannabis Industry Executive Backs Florida’s Initiative

Steve Reilly, head of government relations at Insa, a vertically integrated multistate operator with a cultivation and processing facility in Auburndale, Florida, tells IgniteIt that consumer safety would be improved with the passage of comprehensive cannabis reform as proposed in Smart & Safe Florida’s initiative.

“Florida continues to face a growing intoxicating hemp crisis, where loosely regulated products are widely available without the consumer protections, testing standards, or oversight that exist in state-regulated cannabis programs,” he writes in an email. “This regulatory gap puts public health at risk and leaves consumers vulnerable to inconsistent and potentially unsafe products.”

“A regulated adult-use cannabis market would bring clarity, strengthen consumer protections, and create a safer alternative to the unregulated intoxicating hemp market that currently thrives in Florida,” Reilly adds. “The momentum behind this campaign, reflected in the hundreds of thousands of verified signatures and the ongoing legal challenge, proves Florida residents want a responsible, regulated cannabis system, and the state should not ignore that reality.”