Court Ruling Allows Group To Gather Electronic Petition Signatures And Gives It More Time To Do It

A group that’s trying to put changes to voting laws on this fall’s ballot has more time to collect petition signatures. And a federal court is also allowing the group to collect them electronically.

Normally during spring and summer, groups that want to put issues before voters are able to gather at festivals and community events with clipboards to collect petition signatures from voters.

But this year, with COVID-19, many of those festivals have been cancelled and social distancing requirements have made it tough for those groups to gather signatures.

So a group that wants to put an election reform measure before voters has been given permission, by a federal court, to use a new process - electronic signatures.

Toni Webb, campaign manager for Ohioans for Secure and Fair Elections, says she’s grateful the court realized the group needed to collect signatures online because it would be virtually impossible in person because of COVID-19 restrictions. But she says it’s still going to be tough.

“Electronic signatures are no easy feat and we still have to collect almost 443,000 valid signatures via an unproven method of signature collections," Webb said.

The federal court also extended the deadline for collecting those signatures by one month. Even so, Webb says she’s unsure whether they can meet the new July 31 deadline.

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