The Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, the campaign supporting a marijuana legalization initiative in Ohio, began collecting a second round of signatures to qualify the initiative for the ballot on Nov. 7, 2023.
Previously, the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol submitted 136,729 valid signatures to the secretary of state in two separate rounds of signature gathering–the first submission of 206,943 signatures on Dec. 20, 2021, and the second submission of 29,918 signatures on Jan. 13, 2022. In Ohio, if a campaign is short of a valid signature requirement after they submit signatures, they have a one-week cure period to collect additional signatures. The secretary of state announced the number of signatures validated on Jan. 28, 2022.
On April 29, 2022, the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol filed a lawsuit against state legislative leaders, arguing that legislative leaders claimed that signatures weren’t submitted in time. In a series of emails, state legislators claimed that a legislative vote can’t take place because valid signatures were not submitted 10 days prior to the start of the legislative period. The coalition and state legislative leaders ended and settled the lawsuit, allowing the coalition to resubmit the first 132,887 collected signatures at the start of the 2023 legislative session.
