JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — None of this year’s 22 citizen-led initiatives will appear before voters in November.
All but one collected fewer than 100,000 petitions.
Smart & Safe Florida’s recreational marijuana initiative ended with 783,000 validated petitions, which was still nearly 100,000 signatures shy of the number needed for ballot placement.
“They were really the only one that we would say was in the game, so to speak,” said Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd.
Secretary of State Byrd spoke only with Action News Jax about the outcome on Tuesday.
He acknowledged state officials disqualified a significant amount of Smart & Safe petitions for various violations of state law, like petition design, return deadlines, unqualified petition gathers and even allegations of outright fraud.
“When you put something in the constitution, it’s almost permanent, which is why we need to actively engage in safeguarding the process and ensure that before we take that step, we’ve done it the right way,” said Byrd.
While Byrd and the Department of State claim that once the clock expired at 5 PM Sunday, it was game over, Smart & Safe is asserting that the assessment is “premature”.
“The final and complete county-by-county totals for validated petitions are not yet reported. We submitted over 1.4 million signatures and believe when they are all counted, we will have more than enough to make ballot,” a Smart & Safe spokesperson told Action News Jax in a statement.
It’s unclear whether a lawsuit may be on the horizon.
If the campaign does sue, Secretary Byrd argued the department’s track record in court throughout this two-year battle speaks for itself.
“We’ve won every single one of those. So, every time some opponent runs to the press and says the state is violating or not doing something right, we go to court, and the facts and evidence are presented,” said Byrd. ”We’ve done everything the right way.”
As a result of alleged fraud during the signature gathering process, Florida’s Attorney General has announced at least 50 criminal investigations and suggested dozens more will be announced in the coming days.
“We will protect the integrity of Florida’s Constitution by holding every last fraudster accountable,” said Attorney General James Uthmeier in a social media post on Monday.
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