How it Works

This petition is for placing the question of whether to adopt voting machine, marking devices, and tabulating equipment on the ballot in any county where the necessary number of signatures cab be obtained. Ohio law stipulates that the required number of signatures in 2% of the number of ballots cast in the county during the last gubernatorial race which occurred in 2022. The petition is sanctioned by the Secretary of State (SoS) and is identified as Form No. 6d on the SoS website and can be downloaded here.

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We need a five-member board for each county to help facilitate this petition through to completion. The petition is non-partisan and requires that only registered voters can sign them.  Once the minimum required number of signatures are obtained (the circulator should try to obtain more than the minimum), the petition will be delivered to the local Board of Elections (BOE) in that county.  As long as the BOE gets them 90 days before the fall election (August 4th) they must put it on the November ballot to be voted on. The November ballot language voted on will read "Shall voting machines, marking devices, and automatic tabulating equipment be adopted in the county of ________________________?"

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A “Yes” vote means that the voter is in favor of allowing the Monroe County to continue using voting machines at the discretion of the BOE.

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A “No” vote means that the voter does not want Monroe County to adopt voting machines and chooses to adopt hand-marked and hand-counted ballots.

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Petition Basics

All people signing the petition must be a registered voter in that county. Anyone gathering the signatures (called a circulator) must sign each two-page form stating that they witnessed the signatories in person. Each signature line does not have to be signed for the petition to be valid. For example, if the circulator gathers only 19 signatures, they must put an X through the blank lines not used and write in “19” in the blank space designated on the form for the number of figures gathered.

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Background History

Recently, Ohio’s Secretary of State has denied citizen’s request to have Ohio’s voting machines examined by an independent team of experts to see if Ohio’s machines have security flaws as found in other states. He also denied a public record’s request to provide documented evidence that Ohio’s voting machines do not contain wireless modems that would allow them to be connected to the internet and vulnerable to hacking. In addition, he denied citizen’s request from a small rural county in Ohio to hand-count all the ballots from the 2024 election (less than 5,000 ballots) using volunteers at no cost to the government to verify the accuracy of the machines. In short, the voters in Ohio are told to “trust” the government when it says the machines are safe and secure.

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Over the last twenty years, electronic voting machines have been at the center of controversy in the presidential elections of 2004, 2016 and most recently, 2020. Takeaways from these three elections included findings that some voting machines contain software that could be used to manipulate or flip votes, foreign actors were able to hack into election system networks, and forensic examinations of the machines in Michigan and Colorado provided documented evidence of vote manipulation.

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Despite the Secretary of State’s claims that Ohio sets the “gold” standard for secure elections, the fact is that many voters have lost trust in the voting machines and want to have a voice regarding their continued use. 

 

Therefore, the registered voters of ________ County wish to exercise their right to choose how they vote. 

 

Please CONTACT US to volunteer for this effort.