ResponibleOhio will have until July 30 to find extra signatures on its ballot proposal after its initial petitions fell short.
The group trying to make marijuana legalization a ballot issue in the 2015 general election has experienced a small setback, landing 29,509 signatures shy of the required 305,591 on its ballot petitions.
ResponsibleOhio members submitted their petitions to the Ohio Secretary of State’s office June 30. According to a news release from last month, the group had acquired 695,273 total signatures, more than twice the required amount.
But the Secretary of State’s Office announced Monday that some of those signatures were invalid.
The group will have until July 30 to acquire the remaining signatures.
“Our team has done an excellent job of collecting signatures from voters across the state who want the chance to repeal failed marijuana prohibition this fall,” ResponsibleOhio Executive Director Ian James said in a news release sent out Monday. “Over the next 10 days, our team of over 200 staffers will be working diligently to collect the remaining 29,509 signatures we need to qualify for the November 2015 ballot."
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James grew up in Athens and graduated from Ohio University. He now lives in Columbus.
Secretary of State Press Secretary Josh Eck said he couldn’t pinpoint any specific reasons why some signatures weren’t counted, since petitions are counted by each county’s board of elections. But he did cite some common petitioning pitfalls.
“Common issues are that the person isn’t registered to vote or it was an unreadable signature,” he said. “It’s those kinds of issues.”
Penny Brooks, executive director of the Athens County Board of Elections, said there were a high number of invalid signatures on the Athens petitions, but nothing too out of the ordinary.
Her office counted a total of 294 petitions, seven of which were completely invalid.
On the valid petitions, there were 967 valid signatures. A total of 2,004 signatures were submitted to the Athens Board of Elections.
“With this type of petition, it’s probably a pretty normal range of how this fell, but there were a lot of invalid signatures,” she said.
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She said some of the common issues her office sees are people printing their names instead of signing them and not putting the address where they are registered to vote.
Faith Oltman, a spokeswoman for ResponsibleOhio, said the group puts its petitions through a rigorous electronic scanning process in order to prevent many of those invalid signatures.
“That system showed us that there were over 40,000 signatures that were accounted for and that we counted but were not counted for at local boards of elections,” she said.
In the press release, James said the group will take the issue to the Ohio Supreme Court in order to account for those signatures.
"Every single voter who signed this petition has the right to be counted,” he said in the release. “We will be taking these shortfalls to the Ohio Supreme Court to ensure that those thousands of voices are heard."
This isn’t the first time ResponsibleOhio has come up against obstacles in pursuit of getting their proposal approved.
Nick Neely, vice president of the Ohio Rights Group, which is also working on a marijuana legalization proposal for next year, said ResponsibleOhio’s proposal was driven primarily by economic interests because a board of investors would have full control of regulation.
In June, the state legislature adopted House Joint Resolution 4, which could potentially invalidate ResponsibleOhio’s proposal.
That resolution would prohibit any ballot initiative that creates a monopoly or grants commercial licensing rights to one group over another, according to the senate analysis of the resolution.
If, at a later election, voters approve of such an initiative, the Ohio Ballot Board has the right prevent that initiative from taking effect.
House Joint Resolution 4 will be on the Nov. 3 ballot.
“We think the answer will be pretty clear to voters,” Oltman said. “There will be two choices: one will be to legalize marijuana, tax it and make it safe for Ohioans to use voters (or to) continue failed marijuana prohibition.”
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If passed, the proposal would authorize marijuana to be produced at ten growing facilities throughout the state of Ohio.
The marijuana would then go to one of five testing facilities, one of which would be in Athens, before being shipped off to retailers.
The measure would also allow individuals to apply for a home-growing permit, which would allow them to grow up to four plants.
Oltman said she was optimistic that the group will be able to regain the missing signatures before July 30, adding that they have 200 volunteers throughout the state who will begin re-circulating petitions Tuesday.
She also said it’s not uncommon for petitions to fall short due to invalid signatures.
“It’s not easy to get an issue on the ballot in Ohio and having the ten day grace period, it’s been the norm,” she said. “We know we have a lot of support here and that the majority of Ohioans support legalization.”
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