I wish I had better news for you, but with just three days until Florida’s February 1st deadline, Smart & Safe Florida is still about 120,000 signatures short of getting adult-use cannabis on the November ballot.
The Division of Elections website updated Monday showing 760,002 valid signatures—a jump from 714,888 just a day earlier. That’s progress, sure, but they need 880,062 total to qualify. And with time running out, the math isn’t looking good.
The Numbers Game Nobody Wanted to Play
Frustratingly, that signature count sat frozen at 675,307 for nearly two months before finally updating last week. Smart & Safe Florida even filed a lawsuit challenging the Division of Elections for not updating numbers weekly like state law requires.
Their argument? They were “essentially flying blind” on where they stood, not knowing which counties needed more attention or how close they actually were to the threshold. How are you supposed to run an effective petition drive when you don’t even know your own numbers?
The Division of Elections claims they were just being thorough, scrutinizing potentially invalid signatures. But when you’re working on a deadline this tight, two months of radio silence is basically sabotage.
Appeals Court Says State Can Toss 70,000 Signatures
As if the frozen count wasn’t bad enough, the 1st District Court of Appeal sided with Secretary of State Cord Byrd on Friday, allowing the state to invalidate roughly 70,000 petition signatures.
Smart & Safe FL had challenged those invalidations in a separate lawsuit back in December, arguing these signatures were being thrown out under rules that didn’t exist when they were originally collected and verified. The campaign called it what it was: retroactive enforcement designed to kill their chances.
The court didn’t care. Those 70,000 signatures won’t count toward the final total, meaning the campaign lost ground they thought they’d already secured.
Identity Theft Arrest Adds Another Layer of Chaos
And just when you think things can’t get worse for this campaign, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced charges against one of their petition circulators.
Teagen Marie Targhuhanuchi, 41, of Titusville, faces 12 counts of identity theft, 12 counts of submitting fraudulent voter information, and one count of identity theft involving more than 10 people.
So there’s less confusion – here’s what allegedly happened:
- Targhuhanuchi collected legitimate petition signatures for Smart & Safe Florida—people actually signed those forms…. →
- Then she allegedly took the personal information from those petition sheets (names, addresses, dates of birth, driver’s license numbers)… →
- Then used it to submit fraudulent voter registration applications without anyone’s knowledge or permission.
So the petition signatures themselves were real. But what she did with that personal information afterward? That’s identity theft, no two ways around it.
The Charlotte County Supervisor of Elections flagged the irregular registration activity, and now the Office of Statewide Prosecution is handling the case.
While it wasn’t the “Marijuana Petition Scandal” that everyone was blowing things out of proportion expecting. There’s been no negligence or improper conduct on the part of Smart & Safe FL during their signature gathering phase. Unfortunately, one of their hired signature gatherers was – but the campaign is still pushing forward against the increasingly unfavorable odds of meeting their goal.
It’s All Part of a Bigger Crackdown
It’s still possible that others were working with Targhuhanuchi or were committing similar voter fraud while working for the Smart & Safe campaign. Attorney General Uthmeier announced back on January 20th that his office had launched 46 criminal investigations related to alleged petition fraud, with nine circulators arrested or facing warrants.
If you want the full story on how Florida’s managed to build roadblocks for this campaign around every turn, read our deep dive: From Verified Signatures to Jail Cells: How Florida Rewrote the Rules to Kill Cannabis Legalization.
There we broke down how the state changed petition rules after signatures were already collected. How they’re using arrests to create a chilling effect on future campaigns. And how they’re passing preemptive legislation restricting a program that doesn’t even exist yet and currently only affects a protected class of people (medical cannabis patients).
Where Does This Leave Florida Voters?
Remember 2024’s Amendment 3? That measure got 56% support on a presidential election year. While it’s clear majority of Florida voters wanted adult-use legalization, it failed anyway because of Florida’s 60% supermajority requirement.
Now, two years later, it looks like Florida voters won’t even get the chance to try again. Honestly, it feels like a repeat of Amendment 2 on so many levels – but that’s a story for another post.
At this rate, unless Smart & Safe Florida can pull off an absolute miracle and collect 120,000 verified signatures in the next 72 hours (spoiler: not likely), this campaign is dead. And with it dies another attempt at giving Floridians the right to decide cannabis policy for themselves.
I’m not going to sugarcoat this: watching signature counts slowly climb while the state finds ways to invalidates hundreds of thousands of legitimate petitions is heartbreaking. This is what voter suppression looks like – only they found a way to do it “legally.”
This is what happens when the people in power decide voters shouldn’t get to decide something.
The worst part? Even if Smart & Safe somehow hit the threshold, they’d still have to survive Supreme Court review, defend against Uthmeier’s constitutional challenges, and fight through whatever other obstacles the state managed to throw at them between now and November.
The Feb 1 deadline is Saturday. I’ll be watching the numbers and keeping you updated. But honestly? Start preparing for disappointment.
Stay tuned to All Things Cannabis for updates as the deadline approaches. And if you’re as frustrated as I am about Florida’s approach to ballot initiatives, share this article. People need to know what’s happening.
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