COLUMBUS, Ohio (Legal Newsline) — Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine announced May 22 that he has certified the petition that seeks to amend the Ohio Constitution and change the congressional redistricting process in the state.
DeWine’s office received the petition, titled the Bipartisan Congressional Redistricting Reform Amendment, on May 10 from attorneys representing the Fair Congressional Districts for Ohio committee. DeWine certified the petition because it met two standards: It had 1,000 valid signatures from registered Ohio voters and it had a “fair and truthful” summary of the proposed amendment.
“Without passing upon the advisability of the approval or rejection of the measure to be referred, but pursuant to the duties imposed upon the Attorney General’s Office […] I hereby certify that the summary is a fair and truthful statement of the proposed law,” DeWine wrote in the certification letter.
The petition will go before the Ohio Ballot Board, the organization that determines if the amendment contains a single issue or multiple issues. Following that, the petitioners will need to collect signatures for each issue from registered voters in 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties for a total of 5 percent of the voting electorate. This number is decided by the number of voters who participated in the last gubernatorial election in 2014.