(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Ohio redistricting amendment campaign will turn in 750,000-plus signatures on Monday, group says [1] ['Andrew', 'Tobias', 'Atobias Cleveland.Com', 'Andrew J. Tobias'] Date: 2024-06-26 21:26:25.383000+00:00 COLUMBUS, Ohio — The campaign seeking to place a redistricting reform amendment on the statewide ballot in November plans to turn in more than 750,000 voter signatures to state officials on Monday, a prominent group that’s helping with the effort indicated in a post on social media. The Brennan Center, a left-leaning elections legal advocacy group that’s an official part of the redistricting campaign, touted the number in a social media post on Tuesday. The post also said the group will hold a rally at 12 p.m. on Monday at the Ohio Statehouse to celebrate turning in the signatures. The headline speaker will be Maureen O’Connor, a former Republican Ohio Supreme Court chief justice who’s a key leader with the campaign. The signature number isn’t a slam dunk, since many signatures invariably are rejected by elections officials and the campaign must collect roughly 413,000 signatures to qualify, including a minimum amount from 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties. But overall, it points to the group qualifying for the ballot this November, according to recent precedent. For comparison, a campaign behind last year’s successful abortion rights amendment submitted roughly 710,000 signatures, or 40,000 fewer than the number touted in the Brennan Center’s post. 750,000+ people have signed a petition to put an initiative to end gerrymandering on the ballot in Ohio this November. Join @CitizenMapsOH on July 1 at noon for a rally at the Ohio Statehouse Atrium to celebrate. RSVP ⬇️https://t.co/iDVDvfdBby — Brennan Center (@BrennanCenter) June 25, 2024 Chris Davey, a spokesperson for Citizens Not Politicians, the official campaign group behind the amendment, said he can’t confirm the signature numbers in the Brennan Center post, or details of the event, which was posted by the campaign’s official account at an event-listing service. But, Davey didn’t deny them. “What we’ve said all along is that this amendment enjoys widespread support among Republicans, Democrats and independents all across Ohio,” Davey said. In order to qualify for the November election, the amendment campaign needs to submit 413,487 valid signatures by July 3, or next Wednesday, including the minimum amount from 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties, under state laws that lay out the constitutional amendment process. Amendment campaigns typically submit extra signatures though, sometimes as many as twice as what’s needed, to account for the inevitability that some signatures will be rejected by local elections officials. Typical reasons signatures are rejected include a signer not actually being registered to vote, or that voter’s address on the petition not matching the address that elections officials have on file. To qualify, roughly 55 to 56% of the 750,000 signatures referenced by the Brennan Center would need to be valid, though it also will have to meet the minimum number in 44 counties - an amount equal to 5% of the people who voted in each county in the November 2022 election for governor. For comparison, another amendment campaign that wants to ask voters to raise the state minimum wage to $15 an hour said roughly two weeks ago that it had collected 500,000 signatures. Both groups have been working to gather signatures all year. What’s next? Once the group formally submits the signatures, Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, will organize them and then submit them to elections officials in each individual county for review. In those counties, bipartisan elections officials will review the signatures for validity. The review must be complete by July 23, under state law. If signature rejections cause the campaign to fall below the 413,487-signature minimum, or below the 5% threshold in any individual county, the campaign will get another 10-days to file and submit additional signatures. It’s common for these “cure periods” to end up being needed. For instance, a citizen’s campaign backing a marijuana legalization measure last year ended up falling 679 signatures short following the signature-review process. But the campaign ended up making up the difference, and the measure was approved by voters the following November alongside the abortion-rights measure. In part to head off the redistricting campaign, Republican lawmakers last year tried to make it harder for constitutional amendments to qualify by requiring the minimum per-county number in all 88 counties, and by eliminating the 10-day cure period. Voters rejected measure, called state Issue 1, in the August 2023 election. What would the redistricting amendment do? Citizens Not Politicians’ amendment would replace the Ohio Redistricting Commission, a panel of seven elected officials that’s currently controlled by Republicans, with a 15-member citizen’s panel made up of equal parts Republicans, Democrats and political independents. Politicos, including elected officials, party operatives and lobbyists, and their immediate family members, would be barred from serving on the new commission. There is not yet any formal opposition campaign. But many top state Republicans, led by Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman, have come out in opposition to the amendment. And state records show a prominent Republican political firm founded a campaign PAC in October called Ohioans for Fair Districts — the same name used by a redistricting reform campaign a decade ago tied to the Democratic Party — although the PAC suspended operations last month without accepting any contributions or spending any money. The opposition campaign likely will attract money from national Republicans, since the amendment has the potential to cost Republicans their narrow House majority, since only a relative handful of congressional seats nationally are actually competitive. Andrew Tobias covers state politics and government for cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.cleveland.com/news/2024/06/ohio-redistricting-amendment-campaign-will-turn-in-750000-plus-signatures-on-monday-group-says.html Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/