TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — As Florida’s recreational marijuana campaign again tries to get in front of voters, the state has levied pressure on local elections supervisors — putting them, one official said, “in the middle of a political war.”

That scrutiny intensified this week, when the state Office of Election Crimes and Security told elections supervisors in Orange, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties that it would be conducting audits of certain verified petitions. It’s unclear if other counties will also be audited.

Gov. Ron DeSantis fiercely opposes recreational marijuana. In 2024, his administration used state power and millions of taxpayer dollars to fight a legalization proposal sponsored by the group Smart & Safe Florida.

That committee is again trying to get a recreational initiative through and in lawsuits has accused the DeSantis administration of delays and issuing directives aimed at stopping them.

Gretl Plessinger, a spokesperson for the Department of State, said the “Office of Election Crimes and Security is performing audits to ensure all signatures are legitimate and gathered in accordance with state laws.”

Plessinger said in the last three months, the election crimes office has received more than 1,700 notices from voters saying their signatures had been forged or misrepresented on petitions. (About 675,000 petitions have been verified so far, according to the state database.)

But David Ramba, executive director of the Florida Supervisors of Elections group, which represents the 67 elections officials across the state, said county supervisors are “caught in the middle of a political war.”

Ramba said county elections officials aren’t hiding anything with the way they’re handling petitions and the state is welcome to look. But he said the state adding hurdles is making it harder for elections supervisors to do their jobs.

The DeSantis administration in recent months sent county elections offices multiple memos telling them to toss some already-validated petitions or to change their process. In at least one case, a county elections official pushed back on the state’s justification. There is less than a month left for the amendment to qualify for the 2026 ballot.

The head of the state’s Division of Elections copied the Attorney General’s Office on at least two of the directives — a decision Ramba said he had “very little patience for.”

One directive this week told supervisors to invalidate petitions collected by 25 petition collectors who’d had their registration revoked. It also said to reevaluate signatures collected while the circulators’ registration was still valid.

On Jan. 12, Maria Matthews, director of the state Division of Elections, followed up with an email to at least three supervisors — Julie Marcus in Pinellas County, Craig Latimer in Hillsborough County and Karen Castor Dentel in Orange County — informing them there will soon be in-person audits for those affected petitions.

Castor Dentel confirmed the upcoming audit when reached by phone. Public records show that Jillian Pratt, the director of the election crimes office, told Pinellas officials that auditors would likely come by next week.

Last week, Matthews sent a different notice to elections supervisors. Part of a new law requires counties to send voters notice “as soon as practicable” once their petition has been verified. The notice gives a voter the ability to mark their form as a forgery, invalidating it.

In her memo, Matthews said that “as soon as practicable” meant the same day a form was verified. She said elections officials “must ensure” that the verification notice is in the mail to the voter before reporting the validated petition to the state.

Lake County’s elections supervisor, Alan Hays, quickly responded with concern.

“Is that in any statutory list of definitions ?!” Hays said in his email. “I have NEVER known the term ‘as soon as practicable’ to mean or imply the same day as an action is completed.”

Ramba said Matthews’ directive isn’t what the law intended — and that if the state wants same-day notices, it can develop a rule saying so.

“I told my people not to worry about if it’s the next day because you’re following the law,” Ramba said. “They don’t get to define ‘as soon as practicable.’”

The Smart & Safe Florida campaign said in a statement that the state is “using every means necessary to stifle the voices of over a million Florida voters who have lawfully and legally signed petitions.”

“It seems there is nothing that will stop the administration from preventing these voters from having their say,” a campaign spokesperson said.

Last year, the Division of Elections issued two other directives that have since been challenged in court. One ordered supervisors to remove about 200,000 petitions that were sent to voters via direct mail, a decision that a judge upheld on the Friday before Thanksgiving.

When supervisors were not removing those petitions fast enough, the administration came calling.

On Dec. 2, about one week after the decision, Ramba sent an email to the elections supervisors noting that the Florida secretary of state and staff had called him. In his email, Ramba said it was “made clear that this needs to be a top priority” and that he was “working to correct the misconception” that supervisors were flouting the law.

Duval County Supervisor of Elections Jerry Holland said over the last few months, supervisors have received memos from the state with the message of, “Do this or else.”

“It’s very unusual … to get almost what you’d call idle threats if you don’t do something,” he said.

There is an ongoing court case about another state directive from last fall, which told supervisors to remove about 30,000 petitions collected by non-Florida residents and about 42,000 petitions signed by inactive voters.

Leon County elections supervisor Mark Earley said the requests from the state to invalidate already validated petitions “increases the workload” as supervisors try to sift through thousands of petitions ahead of the Feb. 1 deadline.

Earley took issue in particular with the state’s push to not include petitions from inactive voters, who have not interacted with the elections system for a certain period of time but who are still eligible to vote. In a court filing in a suit Smart & Safe Florida brought challenging that directive, Earley said he asked Matthews to reconsider the issue.

But Earley said in the filing that because he had not heard back from Matthews, he has been rescinding those petition verifications based on the state’s request.

In order to qualify for the 2026 ballot, the marijuana campaign needs about 880,000 verified petitions by Feb. 1. If it passes that threshold, its next challenge will be to get through the state Supreme Court.

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