(COLUMBUS, Ohio)—Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine today certified the petition for the proposed Bottle Bill for Ohio amendment to the Ohio Constitution. A previous submission of the amendment was rejected in March because the minimum petition signatures could not be validated.
On September 29th, the Ohio Attorney General’s Office received a written petition to amend the Ohio Constitution, entitled “Bottle Bill for Ohio,” from the committee to represent the petitioners. The submission was certified today as containing both the necessary 1,000 valid signatures from registered Ohio voters and 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,…I hereby certify that the summary is a fair and truthful statement of the proposed constitutional amendment,” DeWine stated in a letter to the Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted.
Once the summary language and initial signatures are certified, the Ohio Ballot Board must determine if the amendment contains a single issue or multiple issues. The petitioners must then collect signatures for each issue from registered voters in each of 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties, equal to 5 percent of the total vote cast in the county for the office of governor at the last gubernatorial election. Total signatures collected statewide must also equal 10 percent of the total vote cast for the office of governor at the last gubernatorial election.
The full text of today’s letter and of the amendment petitions submitted can be found at www.OhioAttorneyGeneral.gov/BallotInitiatives.
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