Tactics to keep duly-qualified citizen ballot measures off local ballots raise constitutional concerns in Ohio and Washington.

This press release was published by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund on July 22, 2019.

MERCERSBURG, PA: Residents petitioning for municipal laws to expand human, civil, and ecosystem rights, while governing corporate activities, are facing administrative run-arounds, legal stonewalling and novel tactics to remove duly-qualified ballot measures from ever being voted on.

In Ohio, since 2015, courts, appointed county boards of elections, and the Office of the Secretary of State – with assistance from the state legislature – have removed 14 ballot measures that had sufficient signatures and satisfied all administrative requirements. The initiatives address fossil fuel pipelines, fracking waste disposal, fossil fuel extraction, drinking water protections, Rights of Nature and/or fair and free local elections. Measures have been removed in Youngstown, Toledo, Columbus, and Portage, Medina, Athens, and Meigs counties.

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) is supporting the respective plaintiffs from these communities in a federal civil rights lawsuit against specific Ohio boards of elections and current and past secretaries of state. The lawsuit argues the tactics used to keep the initiatives off the ballot directly violate residents’ constitutional rights of freedom of speech, right of assembly, right to petition the government for redress of grievances, right to vote, right of due process, and right of local, community self-government. 

Oral arguments are scheduled for Wednesday, August 26, 2019, pertaining to the State’s and two counties’ motions to dismiss the people’s case.

Most recently, in Williams County, Ohio, a Common Pleas Court judge on July 17 upheld a board of elections decision to keep a qualified county charter off the ballot. That measure addresses Rights of Nature of the Michindoh Aquifer and water privatization.

(Read the rest of this press release at its original source HERE!)