{"id":134608,"date":"2026-01-28T06:45:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T06:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/134608\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T06:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T06:45:09","slug":"desantis-agency-starts-probe-of-broward-pot-petitions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/134608\/","title":{"rendered":"DeSantis agency starts probe of Broward pot petitions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019 administration has dispatched state election crimes investigators, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the state Attorney General\u2019s Office to investigate marijuana-referendum petitions processed by the Broward Supervisor of Elections Office.<\/p>\n

The team arrived at the elections headquarters in Fort Lauderdale on Monday and was still present on Tuesday, county Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott said. He declined to discuss the number of investigators present or what they were doing. \u201cI cannot talk about an ongoing criminal investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Letters to Scott from Secretary of State Cord Byrd, dated Saturday, and from the attorney general\u2019s statewide prosecutor, dated Sunday, identified concerns about the verification of signatures on petitions seeking to get a statewide marijuana legalization referendum on the ballot this year.<\/p>\n

Byrd\u2019s letter said that his director of the Office of Election Crimes and Security reported to him that after a visit to the Broward elections headquarters on Friday to \u201caudit\u201d the petition verification process, there were \u201cseveral matters of great concern that warrant further investigation and likely referral for criminal prosecution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Citing the Feb. 1 deadline for verifying the referendum petitions, Byrd wrote that it was \u201cimperative that the concerns raised during the audit be addressed now\u201d and told Scott that he was sending Office of Election Crimes staff back to Fort Lauderdale. \u201cAt my request, the Attorney General and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement will also be present to investigate and take any necessary action.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Byrd letter didn\u2019t say who could be referred for prosecution.<\/p>\n

The second letter, from statewide prosecutor Bradley R. McVay, was more specific, and outlined a focus on Smart & Safe Florida, which is leading the drive to get the marijuana issue on the ballot, and petition circulators who work with or are employed by the organization.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have reason to believe that a number of these petitions contain forged signatures or are otherwise fraudulent in nature, likely containing stolen voter personal identifiable information. Given the volume \u2014 potentially hundreds of Florida victims \u2014 my office intends to act fast,\u201d McVay wrote.<\/p>\n

He said he ordered two prosecutors to the supervisor\u2019s office to work alongside two FDLE agents and the staff from the Office of Election Crimes.<\/p>\n

Taking the two letters together, Scott said Smart & Safe Florida and its petition circulators are the focus of the state action \u2014 not him or his office. A spokesperson for Smart & Safe Florida declined to comment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe letter (from Byrd) is vague about exactly what they are investigating,\u201d Scott said.\u00a0The second letter, from the statewide prosecutor, \u201cprovided a lot of clarity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scott said multiple elements in Byrd\u2019s letter that describe the operations of his office are false, misleading or grossly out of context.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is just incredibly frivolous and petty. And that\u2019s how it starts and goes on from there,\u201d Scott said. \u201cWhen you get to his paragraph saying we were generally disorganized, some of it is inaccurate, some of it is unfair. \u2026 We don\u2019t understand where he\u2019s coming from. It\u2019s just totally unfair criticisms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scott said he has seen no \u201cindication that this office or anyone who works for this office is under investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also said he did not view the presence of investigators or statements in the secretary of state\u2019s letter as setting the stage for the Republican governor to suspend him from office. \u201cNo, I don\u2019t have any reason to believe that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Scott, a Democrat, was elected to his position by Broward voters in 2020 and reelected in 2024. After his first election, Scott worked closely through the transition with Peter Antonacci, who had been the county\u2019s appointed supervisor of elections and was later DeSantis\u2019 first appointee to lead the election crimes offices. Antonacci died in 2022.<\/p>\n

A majority of the state\u2019s counties have had audit visits from the Office of Election Crimes and Security to see how petition verifications are being handled, said Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link, who is also president of Florida Supervisors of Elections, the professional association of the state\u2019s 67 elected county supervisors.<\/p>\n

They are typically routine, spot checks; the audit visit in Palm Beach County last week lasted about an hour, Link said, not the intense examination that\u2019s taking place in Broward. \u201cI have not heard of any other county other than Broward that\u2019s had this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"BrowardBroward County Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott walks past a viewing window at the state-of-the-art Supervisor of Elections headquarters in Fort Lauderdale. (Carline Jean\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
\nDeSantis\u2019 opposition<\/p>\n

The proposed referendum would amend the Florida Constitution to legalize recreational use of marijuana by people over 21.<\/p>\n

DeSantis is a vociferous opponent of the idea, and was the most prominent opponent of a similar 2024 referendum effort.\u00a0It received a majority of the vote \u2014 55.9% yes; 44.1% no \u2014 but failed because it didn\u2019t reach the 60% threshold required for passage. The most prominent Florida\u00a0voter, President Donald Trump, said at the time he would vote yes.<\/p>\n

In 2025 and this year, the Secretary of State\u2019s Office \u2014 Byrd is a DeSantis appointee \u2014 has issued multiple rulings that collectively have the effect of reducing the number of verified petition signatures and have slowed the process. The sponsors have to have 880,062 verified petitions by the Feb. 1 deadline. As of Tuesday, the Division of Elections reported there were 760,002.<\/p>\n

Attorney General James Uthmeier \u2014 whose statewide prosecutor is involved in the effort \u2014 was appointed to the job by DeSantis last year after serving as the governor\u2019s chief of staff and campaign manager for DeSantis\u2019 unsuccessful candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.<\/p>\n

While he was DeSantis\u2019 top aide, he was a central player in the effort that ended up in defeat of the 2024 marijuana referendum. In his current official role as attorney general, Uthmeier has urged the Florida Supreme Court to not allow the 2026 marijuana referendum on the ballot.<\/p>\n

\"BrowardBroward County Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott, center, helps load the first cart of Vote-By-Mail ballots onto a USPS truck at the Supervisor of Elections Office in Fort Lauderdale Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024. (Amy Beth Bennett \/ South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court is involved because it is responsible for approving the proposed ballot measure, reviewing issues whether proposed constitutional amendments are limited to single subjects and whether the proposed ballot language is clear.<\/p>\n

Scott said that as an election administrator he has no position on the marijuana referendum issue, but said the state is obviously opposed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you look at everything that has happened over the last few months, I think that they have made it clear where they stand on this petition, and they are working very, very hard to discredit the process and the people who are doing this,\u201d he said, adding he\u2019s not judging if their objections are justified or not. \u201cI\u2019m just saying it is clear that is what they are doing, that they are opposed,\u201d Scott said.<\/p>\n

Byrd\u2019s spokesperson didn\u2019t immediately reply to questions on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\"BrowardBroward Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott. (Carline Jean\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
\nSpecifics<\/p>\n

Byrd raised, and Scott refuted, several issues.<\/p>\n

For example, Byrd said his first concern was that petitions verified by Scott\u2019s office \u201cwere missing\u201d required information. For example, he wrote, at least one petition verified valid was missing the signature of the petition circulator who collected the form.<\/p>\n

Scott\u2019s office has reviewed about 115,000 petitions, 70,000 of which his office has verified and 45,000 which are invalid, largely because of state regulations. He said there were four instances in which the space for the petition circulator\u2019s name was blank \u2014 the first issue cited in Byrd\u2019s letter \u2014 an error rate Scott described as miniscule.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo think that there won\u2019t be any human error in this process is just totally unreasonable,\u201d Scott said.<\/p>\n

Byrd also suggested Scott\u2019s office was derelict in sending notices to voters whose signatures on marijuana petitions were verified.<\/p>\n

A state law that went into effect Oct. 1 requires supervisors of elections to send a letter to each person whose signature on a referendum petition is verified.<\/p>\n

It notifies the voter that their signature has been verified. The mailing must also include a pre-addressed, postage-paid form that a voter can use to alert the DeSantis-controlled Office of Election Crimes and Security in Tallahassee if they believe their signature was obtained fraudulently.<\/p>\n

Byrd\u2019s letter states that Scott\u2019s office didn\u2019t send out \u201cthe bulk of notices\u201d until January, based on what \u201cyour staff indicated.\u201d Scott said his office sent out the first batch of required notices in December, weeks before Byrd\u2019s letter suggested \u2014 \u201cwe have receipts\u201d to prove it \u2014 and the Broward mailings went out before some other counties issued theirs.<\/p>\n

He said state auditors were given that information on Friday, the day before Byrd sent his letter. \u201cThey\u2019re taking a comment from a staffer who he doesn\u2019t even identify, and he\u2019s using it to draw conclusions that are false,\u201d Scott said.<\/p>\n

Byrd also said the Office of Election Crimes \u201cidentified a general lack of organization\u201d in the Broward office, discovered verified petitions with signatures that \u201clooked nothing like any of the voter\u2019s signatures in your voter registration records. For example, the signatures in the voter\u2019s registration record were shapes or lines and the signature on the petition was a full name in cursive,\u201d and \u201cseveral instances of the same handwriting occurring over multiple petitions from purportedly different voters.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"FloridaFlorida Secretary of State Cord Byrd, appointed the state’s top election official by Gov. Ron DeSantis, has presided over a series of decisions that make it less likely a proposed state constitutional amendment legalizing recreational marijuana can get on the 2026 ballot. (Florida Channel\/courtesy)<\/p>\n

Scott said his office \u201chas done a very good job in processing these petitions in what was actually an exceptionally difficult year,\u201d citing \u201csweeping changes\u201d to state law that went into effect last year and implementation of a new voter registration system in September. \u201cI think the criticism that we were disorganized was from the fact that we were trying to figure out how to do things for the first time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The two-page letter from McVay, the statewide prosecutor, was focused entirely on organizers of the petition effort, including \u201cwhether Smart & Safe Florida violated any criminal laws by knowingly submitting fraudulent petitions to election officials.\u201d<\/p>\n

He wrote that \u201cwe believe 27 of the Smart & Safe Florida circulators who were terminated for petition fraud\u201d \u2014 and who are currently \u201csubjects of active criminal investigations\u201d \u2014 had petitions submitted to Scott\u2019s office, which invalidated about 535 and validated about 302.<\/p>\n

McVay also asked for any records about \u201cpetitions that were submitted by Smart & Safe Florida for which the signature on the petition is associated with a voter who was deceased at the date of the purported signature.\u201d McVay\u2019s letter didn\u2019t say if his office suspected petitions signed by supposedly dead voters had been verified or were rejected.<\/p>\n

Political writer Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019 administration has dispatched state election crimes investigators, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[506,2715,28,29,249,251,250,114,266,7659,5741,5742,115,99,109],"class_list":{"0":"post-134608","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-lauderdale","8":"tag-broward-county","9":"tag-elections","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-florida-news","12":"tag-fort-lauderdale","13":"tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","14":"tag-fort-lauderdale-news","15":"tag-latest-headlines","16":"tag-local-news","17":"tag-marijuana","18":"tag-national-news","19":"tag-national-politics","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-politics","22":"tag-social"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}