Ballot Board certifies 'The Ohio Clean Energy Initiative' as two separate ballot issues

The Ohio Ballot Board has certified the proposed constitutional amendment known as “The Ohio Clean Energy Initiative” as two separate ballot questions.

Section 3519.01 of the Ohio Revised Code has long required that a statewide ballot issue may only contain one proposal and the Ballot Board is required to make the single or multiple issue designation by section 3505.062 of the Ohio Revised Code. This long-standing principle is unrelated to the people’s passage of State Issue 2 from the Nov. 3, 2015 General Election.
 
1. The first ballot question would ask voters to amend the constitution to provide for the issuance of general obligation bonds for the purposes stated within the amendment.
 

[[In-content Ad]]2. The second ballot question would ask the voters to modify the citizen initiative process, only for this particular constitutional amendment, should it be approved by voters, by allowing them to return the issue to the ballot for changes should the amendment be altered or struck down by a court.
 
Petitioners will now need to submit to the Attorney General summaries of the two separate ballot initiatives. Should the Attorney General find their newly-submitted summaries to be fair and truthful, the petitioners will need to collect 305,591 signatures for each of the two ballot proposals, an amount equal to 10 percent of the total vote cast for governor in 2014.
 
As part of the total number of signatures needed to place each measure on the ballot, petitioners must also collect signatures from at least 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties, and within each of those counties, collect enough signatures equal to five percent of the total vote cast for governor in the most recent gubernatorial election, 2014.
 
Secretary Jon Husted serves as chair of the Ballot Board and oversees the board’s proceedings. Other members of the Ballot Board include: Ohio Senate President Keith Faber; State Representative Kathleen Clyde, former State Senator Nina Turner; and William N. Morgan. Ballot Board meetings are open to the public.