TALLAHASSEE, Fla. \u2014 It\u2019s a race to the finish with a looming Sunday deadline for the renewed effort to give voters a second shot at legalizing recreational marijuana.<\/p>\n
The Smart & Safe campaign is still 120,000 signatures short according to the database maintained by the state<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Smart & Safe campaign claims 270,000 petitions have been tossed out by the state over the course of its two-year petition gathering effort.<\/p>\n In a statement, the Smart & Safe campaign accused the Department of State of, \u201cusing every means necessary to stifle the voices of over a million Florida voters who have lawfully and legally signed petitions\u201d.<\/p>\n Florida\u2019s Attorney General has opened at least 50 criminal investigations into alleged petition fraud related to the legalization effort and teased dozens more will be announced in the coming days.<\/p>\n \u201cAt this point, it is apparent that Smart & Safe Florida\u2019s petition fraud touches nearly all of Florida\u2019s 67 counties,\u201d Attorney General James Uthmeier posted on social media<\/a> Thursday.<\/p>\n >>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n Jodi James with Florida Cannabis Action Network has worked on citizen-led initiatives in the past.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone wants fair and clean elections, but fair and clean elections means that every vote is counted, every vote is counted properly and it also means not putting the heavy hand of government into the process,\u201d James said.<\/p>\n She noted Florida lawmakers have spent years passing laws aimed at restricting the citizen initiative process.<\/p>\n And while state leaders have emphasized alleged cases of fraud, the bulk of the invalidated petitions were tossed due to a lack of compliance with those new laws like stringent return deadlines and requirements for petition gatherers to be Florida residents and the full amendment text to be included on petition forms.<\/p>\n \u201cIf Smart & Safe isn\u2019t able to get this to the ballot this time, I think it\u2019s going to have a chilling effect on future initiatives being able to make the ballot,\u201d James said.<\/p>\n Voters like Raheem Moses told Action News Jax they\u2019re skeptical the state\u2019s efforts are truly centered around election integrity, instead suggesting the ordeal stinks of politics.<\/p>\n \u201cI strongly believe that they\u2019re throwing all these ballots out there, holding up the process. They don\u2019t really want it to go through,\u201d Moses said.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n Brandon Austin said he feels if the initiative doesn\u2019t make the ballot, he and millions of other voters\u2019 voices will be silenced.<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, we\u2019re supposed to live in a democratic country and that\u2019s supposed to be the idea that the people make the decisions first,\u201d Austin said.<\/p>\n In 2024, a similar ballot initiative led by Smart & Safe got almost 56 percent voter support, but fell short of the 60 percent needed to pass.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE, Fla. \u2014 It\u2019s a race to the finish with a looming Sunday deadline for the renewed effort…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[982,6277,67716,61050,2318,28,67714,969,116,118,117,971,970,44784,67713,13743,634,67715,67712,67711],"class_list":{"0":"post-138957","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-action_news","9":"tag-attorney_general","10":"tag-brandon_austin","11":"tag-department_of_state","12":"tag-downtown","13":"tag-florida","14":"tag-florida_cannabis_action_network","15":"tag-jack","16":"tag-jacksonville","17":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","18":"tag-jacksonville-news","19":"tag-jake","20":"tag-jake_stoan","21":"tag-jake_stofan","22":"tag-jodi_james","23":"tag-live","24":"tag-local","25":"tag-raheem_moses","26":"tag-smart_and_safe","27":"tag-smart_and_save_florida"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138957","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=138957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}