Secretary of State Jon Husted
Husted Certifies Redistricting Amendment
Petitioners have met requirements to place issue on November 2012 ballot. 

COLUMBUS – Secretary of State Jon Husted today certified that petitioners seeking to place a redistricting reform constitutional amendment on the November ballot collected an additional 151,889 valid signatures. The total number of valid signatures now certified is 406,514 and meets the constitutional requirements. Petitioners needed 385,253 valid signatures, or 10 percent of the total vote cast for Governor in 2010. 

As part of the total number of valid signatures needed to place the measure on the ballot, petitioners must also have collected signatures from at least 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties, and within each of those counties collected enough valid signatures equal to five percent of the total votes cast for governor in the most recent gubernatorial election, 2010. Petitioners for the proposed constitutional amendment met or exceeded the five percent threshold in 60 counties. 

The Voters First proposal, which has spearheaded this initiative, aims to take away map-drawing powers from elected officials and put them in the hands of a 12-person citizen commission. 

The Ohio Republican Party is fighting the measure; state representatives representing Darke and neighboring counties have indicated that the initiative proposes an unelected bureaucracy will not be responsible to voters. It will determine its own salaries and have unlimited funds available to it. 

It failed its first submission with the Secretary of State determining that nearly half of the submitted petitions were fraudulent.