Uniform rule aids fairness

New law sets consistent time limit for gathering petition signatures

Gov. John Kasich signed a bill into law last week that sets a uniform time limit for groups to gather signatures for placing issues on the ballot. Critics should give the law a chance to prove itself.

While one can debate exactly what limits are reasonable, a uniform limit does not violate Ohioans’ right to place issues on the ballot, it simply ensures that all are subject to the same rule.

A group aiming to place an initiative or a referendum on the ballot has 90 days to collect the threshold number of petition signatures; it then turns them in to the Ohio secretary of state to verify that enough valid signatures have been gathered. Senate Bill 47 stipulates that the group must stop collecting new signatures while the submitted ones are verified. Then, if the group needs more signatures, it would have 10 days to go collect more.

Under the old system, groups would turn in their petitions but, while they waited, could keep collecting signatures. The secretary of state has taken anywhere from 16 to 58 days to verify the signatures in recent years, so some groups got more days to gather and others got fewer, between 116 and 158 days. The law establishes uniformity.

“It is to prevent gamesmanship by the secretary of state, gamesmanship by the boards of election and to make sure everybody gets the same 100 days,” Sen. Bill Seitz of Cincinnati, the sponsor, told Gongwer News Service.

Under the old system, a secretary of state who approved of a ballot issue could take his time getting the petition signatures verified, thereby giving the group a lot more time to collect additional signatures. Or he could rush through petitions on issues he opposed.

Citizens absolutely have a right to petition their government and to bypass it when enough voters believe it is not doing its job. Trouble is, zealots for a cause always will believe the legislature is derelect if it isn’t doing exactly what they want. To prevent frequent and frivolous ballot issues, groups should have to demonstrate a significant amount of public support to put an issue on the ballot.

If a group can’t garner sufficient new signatures within 10 days, perhaps it hasn’t done an effective job or else the public doesn’t care sufficiently about the issue. The point of gathering signatures is, after all, to gauge support.

The bill’s critics have not produced evidence that the new law would have prevented any previous successful petition effort from achieving a place on the ballot.

The public shouldn’t grow so cynical about government that it forgets the legitimate role of lawmakers. Their job is to weigh policy and hear testimony from different perspectives, and to consider how well proposed laws fit with existing laws.

The latter is a key consideration. Lacking the normal deliberative process of the legislature, ballot issues can have unintended consequences, posing conflicts with other laws. They also can be driven by the passions of the moment, a tendency that representative government is intended to slow and moderate.

While ballot issues from time to time may be necessary, they are not a replacement for representative government, as some states, such as California, have learned the hard way. Reasonable limitations on the petition process protect us from chaos.