Q: How many signatures do we need and by when? A: We need a total number of valid registered voter signatures from Ohio voters that is at least 10% of the total number of votes cast for the office governor at the last gubernatorial election. The last gubernatorial election was in 2010. , 10% of the total votes cast in that election is 385,245. Therefore, we will need to turn in at least 385,245 valid signatures from registered Ohio voters.

The difficulty with collecting signatures, however, is that it's hard to know for sure if a person is a registered voter with up-to-date registration information until the county board of elections checks their signature and address on the petition against what is on file at the board. This means that we need to collect more signatures than the 385,245 signatures required in order to get the amendment on the November ballot. Refer to the chart below for ALL signatures that we would need to collect based on the percentage of GOOD signatures that are actually from up-to-date registered voters:

The deadline for turning in our signatures in order be eligible to make the November 2012 ballot is July 6th. However, we need time to process all of the petitions to prepare them for submission. Therefore, we want all petitions to be turned in by June 30, 2012. Does that mean it's time to quit collecting signatures after that date? NO! We MUST continue collecting signatures while the Secretary of State and Boards of Elections validate and count our signatures. This process of validating and counting is . During this period we need to be collecting additional signatures to make up for the invalid signatures in our original submission on July 6th. If the cumulative results from the Boards of Elections show that we are short of the 385,245 signatures required, we will have an additional 10 days from the date that the Secretary of State reports the results to make up for the invalid signatures. By the end of that 10 day period, we can make a final submission. After tabulation of the final submission, we will know if we have made it onto the ballot or not. Because of these additional wait periods, we are projecting that we will not be done collecting signatures until sometime in August. Unfortunately, that is as specific as we can be due to the variability in the amount of time it takes the Boards of Elections to count valid signatures.

To summarize:

# of valid signatures needed: 385,245 (or greater) All petitions turned in by date: June 30th, 2012 (but continue getting signatures on fresh petitions in July and August) Submission date: July 6th, 2012 Amount of time for SoS and counties to count signatures: No more than 20 days Anticipated final submission: August 2012