...but lawsuit still pending.
From the Dayton Daily News...
Reform Ohio Now, the group backing four proposals to overhaul Ohio's election system, appears to have enough valid signatures to put the issues on the November ballot, according to unofficial totals Wednesday from Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell's office.
However, a lawsuit aimed at keeping the issues off the ballot still is pending and Attorney General Jim Petro defended his role in supporting the lawsuit, filed by Ohio First, a group led by former Ohio Senate President Richard Finan, R-Evendale.
More below the fold...
As of Wednesday, Blackwell's office had received reports from 85 of Ohio's 88 county boards of election with a total of 341,518 valid signatures from registered voters. That's more than the 322,899 - 10 percent of the votes cast in the last governor's race - needed to qualify for the ballot.
So far, so good.
The lawsuit filed by Ohio First charges that Blackwell wrongly instructed county boards of election that the petitions did not have to be circulated by Ohio residents.
In his friend of the court brief, Petro said he was defending a 1995 state law requiring that circulators be Ohio residents. The brief said that in 2001, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that circulators did not have to be registered voters, but that the ruling did not eliminate the residency requirement. The brief likened not placing requirements on circulators to "allowing a 12-year-old illegal alien to circulate petitions."
Blackwell spokesman LoParo said, however, Blackwell's directions on circulators were the same ones he had used on previous petitions.
Does this mean that Issue 1 - last year's gay marriage amendment - is invalid?
Also, Blackwell's lawyer in the Ohio First lawsuit submitted a copy of a 1997 newsletter sent to county boards of election by Blackwell's predecessor as secretary of state, current Republican Gov. Bob Taft. It said there is no requirement that circulators be either registered voters or Ohio residents.
Petro said Taft's instructions, like Blackwell's, were wrong.
Askedwhy he hadn't raised this issue before, Petro said "the issue never came up before."
Never thought I'd see the day when I would cheer for Ken Blackwell.
http://www.reformohionow.org/news.jsp?news_item_KEY=1710&t=news