Excellent Cato Institute Commentary on Citizen Initiatives

This is a timely commentary on the importance of citizen initiatives, particularly with the upcoming Tuesday, August 8 special election on Issue 1 in Ohio.


Comments

Excellent Cato Institute Commentary on Citizen Initiatives — 10 Comments

  1. Ohio proposal 1 is a good thing. It should require a super majority to change the Constitution.

  2. But the Prop 1 proposal to require signatures from all 88 counties is not a good thing. More info is available in the linked Ballotpedia article. Frankly, Ohio should reconsider the number of counties it has!

  3. The current requirement is sigs from half (44) of the counties. The number of sigs in each county must be at least 5% of the votes for governor cast in that county. That requires significant organization.

    Rough estimate on how many sigs are needed now: (4.1 million votes for governor in 2022) x 5% x 50% of counties = 100,000 sigs. Prop 1 would bump that up to 200,000 sigs. This is just to get on the ballot, where it can still get voted down.

    According to Ballotpedia, no state requires sigs from every county – Ohio would be the first. Although, Colorado and Nevada require sigs from each legislative district – which are roughly equal in population, unlike Ohio’s counties.

  4. Gathering petition signatures out of some counties, particularly ones that are rural, can be very difficult.

    The legislature does not have to have votes from every county to bring something to a vote, so requiring ballot initiative proponents to gather a certain number of petition signatures from every county is not reasonable.

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