Recreational marijuana and 21 other citizen initiatives fail to qualify for Florida's 2026 ballot

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A proposed amendment to Florida's constitution that would allow recreational marijuana use for adults is one of 22 citizen initiatives that failed to qualify for the 2026 ballot, state officials said.

The Florida Department of State announced Sunday that none of the active proposed constitutional amendments by initiative petition met the legal requirements for placement on the November general election ballot.

The deadline for signatures to qualify for the midterm election was Sunday. Smart & Safe Florida, the group behind the marijuana amendment, said they believed they would have the 880,062 signatures needed after all petitions are processed, but state records show the amendment was about 100,000 signatures short on Monday.

“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,” a Smart & Safe statement 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 exclusion of all amendments follows a yearslong clash between progressive organizers seeking to amend the state’s constitution and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. In 2024, the governor used state money and his political influence to successfully campaign against efforts to legalize adult personal use of marijuana and expand abortion rights.

For years, Florida voters have turned to the citizens’ ballot initiative process to bypass the Republican-dominated Legislature and advance progressive policies, such as raising the minimum wage and restoring the voting rights of people with felony convictions.

Last May, DeSantis signed a law creating new hurdles for citizen-driven ballot initiatives, changes critics say would make it prohibitively expensive and effectively impossible for grassroots campaigners to get issues on the ballot. Since the passage of the law, a campaign to expand Medicaid in the state announced it’s delaying its push to get the question on the ballot until 2028.