The group that wants to put the recently passed elections reform law on the statewide ballot will make another attempt to get petition language certified.
Now that Ohio’s Attorney General has rejected proposed language for a petition to put the elections reform law on the ballot in 2012, the group that’s trying to do that has decided to re-write it. Brian Rothenberg of Progress Ohio says attorneys are working to try to submit new petition language that will satisfy Ohio's Attorney General Mike DeWine. But Rothenberg says he’s hoping the Attorney General won’t take a full 10 days this time around to certify or reject the petition language.
"It sounds as if they wanted to take their time and take the full letter of the law and quite frankly, I thought they were intentionally trying to delay this thing," says Rothenberb, "So we will gather the 1000 signatures and play by the rules but my hope would be that the Attorney General and Secretary of State, if we do exactly what they’ve told us to do, will expedite the process."
Lisa Hackley of Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine’s office says it took 10 days to deny the petition because of its complexity.
"Our attorneys were being very thorough. And we only have 10 days so it’s not a whole lot of time," says Hackley.
Rothenberg says he hopes to have the new petition language within the next couple of days. Once the petition language is certified, the group has until September 25th to gather more than 23 1 thousand valid signatures to keep the law from taking effect this year and to give voters a chance, next year, to kill it.