Organizers collected more than 20,500 signed petitions, more than enough to win a spot on the August ballot, but the Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections has rejected nearly half of those petitions.
Stronger Miami, the political coalition seeking to reform Miami’s frequently dysfunctional government through a voter referendum, will miss the city’s next election in August despite the self-described success of its 10-month petition drive.
Organizers announced in February that they had collected more than 20,500 signed petitions from City of Miami voters, surpassing their own goal and exceeding the threshold needed to win a spot on Miami’s election ballot this year.
But 9,683 of those petitions have been rejected by the county’s supervisor of elections, leaving the group short of its goal by the end of this week, when the deadline to make the August 18 ballot expires.
More than 3,500 petitions were duplicates, the supervisor of elections reported, and another 1,998 petitions were signed by people who don’t live in the city. Other petitions were incomplete, listed wrong information, or were submitted by non-voters.
To make the ballot, Stronger Miami needs signed petitions from approximately 18,000 voters, or 10% of the city’s voting population (175,692 as of the last election).
To date, county election officials have accepted 10,600 Stronger Miami petitions.
The coalition now intends to restart its petition drive.
“We will have to end up gathering more petitions, but I don’t think we are phased by that,” said Abdelilah Skhir, a senior campaign strategist with the ACLU of Florida, one of the organizations in the Stronger Miami coalition. Other partners include One Grove Alliance and Engage Miami.
“Regardless of when we make it to the ballot, our proposal is very popular,” Skhir said.
Others worry about the delay, though, noting the public’s short attention span.
“It does worry me that the longer it drags on, we’ll all move on to something else,” said Andy Parrish, chairman of the Stronger Miami political committee.
Stronger Miami launched its petition drive in April 2025 with the goal of making local government more representative and more responsive to residents.
If the petition drive succeeds and voters approved the reforms, the referendum would expand the Miami City Commission from five to nine members, shift the city’s election calendar to even-numbered years, and ban gerrymandering to benefit a political party.
Skhir said Stronger Miami had paused the petition drive earlier this year because of the confusion caused by the City Commission’s own reform efforts. At one point, there were three competing proposals on the table to change the city’s election calendar.
“We just wanted to step back for a second while all that dust settled,” Skhir said.
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On May 14, the City Commission decided to ask voters in August to shift the city’s election calendar to even-numbered years, starting in 2034.
Asked if Stronger Miami would recommend a “yes” on that proposal, Skhir demurred.
“What I will say is stay tuned. Stronger Miami will be involved,” he said.
In the meantime, the county’s Supervisor of Elections will continue to review the signed petitions gathered by Stronger Miami.
Asked if Stronger Miami had any reason to suspect Supervisor of Elections Alina Garcia was playing politics and disqualifying more petitions than she should, Skhir said no.
“I wouldn’t say there have been any overt actions that would lead us to that conclusion,” he said.
Editor’s Note: Mel Meinhardt, the publisher of the Spotlight, is a civic activist working to advance the Stronger Miami petition drive. He was not involved in the writing or editing of this story. The Spotlight safeguards its independence by maintaining a strict separation between its editorial function and the outside activities of its members.
