On October 28, a lawsuit was filed to overturn Ohio’s county distribution requirement for statewide initiatives. The case is Citizens in Charge v Brunner, U.S. Dist. Court, Columbus, 08-1014. Similar lawsuits have won against initiative ballot access requirements in Nevada, Idaho and Utah. These lawsuits are all based on the U.S. Supreme Court decision Moore v Ogilvie, from 1969, which invalidated Illinois’ county distribution requirement for statewide independent candidate petitions.

County distribution requirements say the petition is invalid unless it has some specified number of signatures from a particular number of counties. The U.S. Supreme Court decision is based on the fact that counties vary widely in population. So if an initiative, or a candidate, is well-supported in low-population counties, that initiative or candidate can easily overcome the county distribution requirement. But if an initiative or candidate is supported mostly in counties with large populations, the county distribution requirement interferes with the ability to get on the ballot. There are five states (Arizona, Delaware, Hawaii, Nevada, and Rhode Island) in which over half the population lives in a single county.

Courts have struck down all county distribution requirements for candidate and new/minor party petitions, except that Pennsylvania still has it for statewide candidates seeking a place on a primary ballot, and also in 2007 Nebraska passed it for non-presidential statewide independent candidates.