COLUMBUS, Ohio — The proposals to overturn legislation overhauling higher education, eliminate property taxes and end qualified immunity will not be on the November ballot, despite advocates trying to get the question to Ohio voters.
Public education advocates have fallen short 50,000 signatures of the needed 250,000 to put a referendum on the Ohio ballot, Youngstown State University Professor Dr. Cryshanna Jackson Leftwich said. She was aiming to repeal Senate Bill 1, a controversial college overhaul bill.
The effort was led by a small grassroots organization made up of mainly Youngstown State professors like Jackson Leftwich. The group had no money, no backing from statewide or national education groups or paid canvassers — which she said was a problem.
Typically, successful coalitions submit hundreds of thousands more signatures, because oftentimes they are invalid. When Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, the group putting an amendment on the ballot to protect abortion, IVF and contraception, they submitted 300,000 more signatures than needed as cushion room. The group needed around 415,000, submitted 710,000 and ended with about 500,000 valid.
"It shouldn't take millions of dollars to fight [for] democracy," she said. "It shouldn't take millions of dollars for consultants and lawyers for average voting citizens to say, 'Hey, this is an unjust bill.'"
State Sen. Jerry Cirino, the top Republican on the influential Finance Committee, introduced the legislation.
"It provides for a policy to be established for what I call intellectual diversity, which is very important," Cirino said. "It means openness to all various thoughts about various issues, which is the opposite of indoctrination — indoctrination is when you expose students to only one train of thought, so a monolithic thought environment. That is not good for students."
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This massive bill focuses on what the Republican calls “free speech,” banning public universities in Ohio from Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, having “bias” in the classroom, and limiting how “controversial topics” can and can’t be taught. Eliminating DEI would mean no diversity offices, training, or scholarships.
"I believe that will benefit students greatly and produce better students who know how to think and analyze and come to their own conclusions," he added.
Students and professors from across the state have continued to argue that there is nothing wrong with their education, and they are furious that lawmakers are trying to interrupt their classes.
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This is one of the most protested-against bills in recent Ohio history. There were roughly 1,500 people who submitted opponent testimony against S.B. 1, and there were about 30 who submitted in support. Which is why Amanda Fehlbaum, a YSU professor, was shocked when no larger organizations "stepped up" to help them, she said.
The group raised $45,000 in six weeks and collected the signatures without any paid assistance, which was very challenging, Fehlbaum added, emphasizing that larger groups said that a referendum would be "too expensive," she said.
Cirino told us Thursday that he isn't surprised that the effort failed, because he said the bill is good policy.
"I think their biggest problem was that this was a group of disgruntled faculty members, mostly from Youngstown State, who are satisfied with the status quo in higher education," he said. "They couldn't be more detached from reality in terms of what needs to be done to make Ohio's Higher Ed the very best we can be."
But the S.B. 1 repeal wasn’t the only “everyday” group that couldn't get on the ballot.
The Citizens for Property Tax Reform didn't submit the signatures they gathered.
"It's such a huge undertaking," organizer Beth Blackmarr said Thursday.
Blackmarr helped create a coalition of homeowners in Cuyahoga County, hoping to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would eliminate property taxes.
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Her team, Citizens for Property Tax Reform, knew they weren’t near the 415,000 they needed. She didn't have an estimate of how many they collected, nor how much money they raised.
"As naive as we are, we may have underestimated, just a little bit, how big the response was really going to be," she said. "That's been quite rewarding, so we've asked everybody to keep on trucking and keep going."
Despite both being grassroots, her situation is different from Jackson Leftwich's for two main reasons: constitutional amendment proposals can be pushed back to future elections, and she told us a month ago that her proposal didn't even have to reach the ballot.
"Hopefully, what legislators will do is counter with some legislation of their own," she told me in May.
And it has worked.
"I'm hoping this does help to push us," State Rep. David Thomas (R-Jefferson) said when I asked him about the tax amendment.
Thomas leads property tax relief discussions in the House and said that he and the other members heard Blackmarr. Since her amendment, lawmakers have been proposing more property tax relief bills and have passed several in the budget.
"This is a win-win for Ohio," Blackmarr said.
Strategy has to come into play when getting an issue proposed statewide, she added.
"Is this indicative of the challenges that regular people face when trying to access the ballot?" I asked the professors.
"Ohio makes it as difficult as possible," YSU's Education Association President Mark Vopat said, detailing all of the work that must be done to go through the extensive collection process. "I believe that the state has made it as onerous as possible for individual citizens like us, — we're doing this as a voluntary effort — to actually get some sort of referendum passed."
For all ballot proposals, campaigns need valid signatures from at least 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties.
For referendums, the total signatures must be 6% of the total votes cast for governor during the last gubernatorial election. This makes the number about 248,092 valid signatures.
For initiated statutes, the total signatures must be 3% of the total vote cast for governor during the last gubernatorial election. This makes the number about 124,046 valid signatures.
For constitutional amendments, the total signatures must be 10% of the total vote cast for governor during the last gubernatorial election. This makes the number about 413,487 valid signatures.
There have been efforts to make this harder, though.
Republican leaders in Columbus are floating the idea of attempting to make it more difficult to amend the state constitution, a proposal that was defeated in 2023 by Ohioans across the political spectrum.
RELATED: Another fight over majority rule in Ohio? Republican leaders float the idea.
Issue 1 in 2023 would have taken away majority rule in Ohio. The proposed constitutional amendment would have raised the threshold for constitutional amendments to pass from 50%+1, a simple majority, to 60%. It was defeated 57-43%.
The following year, 2024, the Senate GOP moved to increase the amount of counties campaigns must collect from and put more bureaucratic layers on advocates. They wanted to require all groups rallying for a cause that is receiving donations and spending money to register as a political action committee (PAC). This means that groups would have to file disclosures with the government, and it could make it more difficult to collect signatures to get a proposal on a township ballot.
Other challenges campaigns can face deal with the political offices they must go through.
Ohio activists are starting to gather signatures to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would end qualified immunity — a protection for police and other government officials that prevents citizens from suing them.
State law prevents government officials from being held liable for civil damages unless the victim can prove that the officer violated their constitutional rights, which can be an uphill battle, advocates say.
The Ohio Coalition to End Qualified Immunity has been battling Attorney General Dave Yost to get their summary language approved so that they can collect signatures. He has rejected it eight times, and recently, in short, courts have required him to allow them to move forward.
From their approval, they would have only had two months at most to collect signatures. Although initially hopeful for November, their team told us Thursday that they are now aiming for 2026.
But when it comes to S.B. 1, Jackson Leftwich said this isn’t the end for them, either.
"If we got this on the ballot, we would have overturned it," she said.
The group didn't specify if and how they would try again, or just rely on the larger groups in future years.
Follow WEWS statehouse reporter Morgan Trau on Twitter and Facebook.
