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Fall-ballot
ruling awaited on
health-care law...
Ohio justices
have days to weigh
challenge to petitions
By David Eggert
Wednesday August 10, 2011
The
Ohio Supreme Court must decide
soon whether voters can weigh in on a ballot measure seeking to exempt
Ohioans
from being forced to buy health insurance.
After
supporters of the new federal
health-care law challenged the validity of more than 69,000 petition
signatures
on Friday, justices set an accelerated schedule for legal briefs to be
filed no
later than yesterday.
It
is unclear whether the high court
will hear arguments or go ahead and rule. The deadline for a decision
is
Monday. If the court does not rule, the signatures automatically are
deemed
sufficient, and Issue 3 will appear on the November ballot.
Secretary
of State Jon Husted recently
certified 426,998 signatures for the constitutional amendment; 385,245
valid
signatures of registered Ohio voters — 10 percent of the votes cast for
governor in 2010 — were required.
If
the court tosses the challenged
signatures, supporters of the ballot proposal will fall short of the
number
needed. Whether they would get time to file additional signatures
they’ve
already gathered and to collect more would be up to the court.
Brian
Rothenberg, executive director
of ProgressOhio.org, makes two arguments in the lawsuit: that some paid
circulators did not disclose the name of their employer; and that
circulators
who were independent contractors should have registered with the
secretary of
state. Tens of thousands of signatures they gathered are invalid,
Rothenberg
said.
The
independent contractors should
have said they were employed by themselves, not others, according to
the suit.
Husted
said yesterday that Ohio law is
clear and that enough signatures were collected.
“To
argue that part-petitions are
somehow invalid because circulators provided too much information goes
against
the intent of the law, which is designed to ensure full disclosure and
transparency,” he said in a statement.
Read
it at the Columbus Dispatch
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