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It’s official. The proposed abortion amendment will be on Ohio’s November ballot.

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COLUMBUS, Ohio (Statehouse News Bureau) — The Ohio Secretary of State’s office has certified petitions submitted by a coalition of doctors, abortion rights advocates and others who want Ohioans to vote in November on a proposal that, if passed, would enshrine abortion rights into Ohio’s constitution.

Boxes of petitions containing signatures supporting putting an abortion rights amendment on the November ballot sit in a U-Haul truck outside the Ohio Secretary of State's office, waiting to be unloaded.
Boxes of petitions containing signatures supporting putting an abortion rights amendment on the November ballot sit in a U-Haul truck outside the Ohio Secretary of State’s office. [Jo Ingles | Statehouse News Bureau]
The coalition submitted 710,131 petition signatures but needed just shy of 414,000 valid signatures from 44 counties. The Secretary of State’s office said 495,938 valid signatures were collected from 55 counties.

The next step is to take the matter before the Ohio Ballot Board so the Republican-dominated panel can determine language voters will see on the ballot when they vote on the measure this fall. There’s no word yet on when that might happen.

While the abortion rights amendment made the ballot, the effort to compel a November vote on legalizing recreational marijuana did not. The Secretary of State’s office ruled the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol fell short of the 124,046 valid petition signatures needed. The group submitted 222,198 signatures but only 123,367 were declared valid.

How many votes the abortion rights amendment will need for passage is yet to be determined. The only issue on an Aug. 8 special election ballot would increase the threshold for constitutional amendments, including the one in November, to 60%. The threshold now is a majority, 50% plus one vote.

The August proposal also would make it tougher for citizens to put future issues on the ballot by requiring a minimum number of signatures from all 88 counties instead of 44 counties.

Amendments initiated by the legislature would not have to go through that petition process and could be placed straight on the ballot by legislative vote.

Early voting for the Aug. 8 election is now underway at local voting centers or by mail. Turnout for this election has been higher than had been anticipated and there have been lines at some early vote centers throughout the state.