COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The Ohio Supreme Court in a 6-1 ruling on Tuesday ordered state officials to certify a voting-access measure as a single ballot issue, overturning a previous decision backed by Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose that split it into four parts.

In a written opinion, justices said the campaign behind the measure, Ohioans for Secure and Fair Elections, “has a clear legal right to certification of the proposed amendment" as a single issue, and that the Ohio Ballot Board “has a clear legal duty to make that certification." They ordered the ballot board to meet within seven days to do so.

Four Republican justices — Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor and Justices Pat DeWine, Judith French and Sharon Kennedy — joined two Democrats, Justices Michael Donnelly and Melody Stewart, in overturning the Ballot Board decision. Justice Pat Fischer, a Republican, dissented.

Once the Ballot Board certifies the measure, Ohioans for Secure and Fair Elections could theoretically begin circulating petitions needed to get on the ballot. They had been aiming for the November election, a process that would require them to collect valid signatures from 442,958 registered voters from 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties.

But the coronavirus pandemic presents major challenges for circulating petitions, since COVID-19 is spread through close personal contact. A different constitutional amendment campaign seeking to raise Ohio’s minimum hourly wage to $13 has sued in Franklin County court, seeking to be allowed to collect electronic signatures, among other requested changes. Ohioans for Secure and Fair Elections, which is backed by the ACLU, was granted permission on Tuesday to join the case.

The ACLU has asked the judge to also consider temporarily waiving signature requirements altogether, granting ballot access for the November election for three amendments that state officials have certified for signature gathering — the minimum wage amendment, the voter-access amendment, and a third amendment that would change term limits for state lawmakers.

“If any campaign is going to get on the ballot in November, something is going to have to happen because every campaign is absolutely paralyzed by this," said Freda Levenson, legal director for the ACLU in Ohio.

The Ohio Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a request from Ohioans for Secure and Fair Elections to get more time to gather signatures. Justices said the campaign “has not demonstrated any urgency to placing them on this November’s ballot as opposed to a ballot in 2021," since provisions with specific starting dates weren’t set to take effect until Feb. 1, 2022.

A spokeswoman for LaRose, a Republican who chairs the Ohio Ballot Board, said LaRose is “disappointed” in the decision.

“While we are disappointed with the decision by the Supreme Court, we certainly respect their decision and will soon take the next steps to convene the Ballot Board,” said the spokeswoman, Maggie Sheehan.

Toni Webb, campaign manager for Ohioans for Secure and Fair Elections, said her group through the Franklin County lawsuit is continuing to fight to make the ballot.

“The ballot board’s unlawful decision to choose politics over people underscores why our proposal must go directly before voters,” Webb said. “But the battle is not over: Now we face the impossible challenge of meeting the state’s requirement to collect hundreds of thousands of petition signatures in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Under the initial proposal, Ohioans would automatically be registered to vote upon applying for or renewing a driver’s license or other state-issued ID. It also would allow eligible Ohioans to register to vote and cast a ballot on the same day throughout the early voting period. This would reinstate and expand what previously was referred to as “Golden Week,” which the Republican-controlled state legislature eliminated in 2014.

It also contains language ensuring disabled Ohioans have “full and equal access to register to vote and to voting” and requiring a post-election audit for accuracy.

But on March 2, the ballot board’s Republican members voted to split the issue into four parts, with different sections dealing with elections administration, voter registration, voting rights for citizens with disabilities and a requirement for a post-election audit.

They sided with the Ohio Republican Party, which sent an attorney to the meeting who argued the proposal didn’t meet Ohio’s legal standard for constitutional amendments, which have required a proposed amendment to pertain to a single topic.

Splitting the measure would have required the campaign to collect four times as many signatures and likely lowered the chances that all four parts would be passed.

The Ballot Board’s two Democratic members argued the amendment clearly pertained to one subject — elections — and that recent Supreme Court precedent required the ballot board to interpret the single-subject standard liberally.

In joint opinion issued Tuesday, O’Connor, Donnelly and Stewart agreed with that argument. They cited a 2010 Ohio Supreme Court ruling that kept an anti-Obamacare amendment intact.

But in a separate opinion, Kennedy, French and DeWine argued the single-subject rule only applies to amendments proposed by state lawmakers, and wrote other courts have interpreted the issue incorrectly in the past.

Regardless of their reasoning, the six justices agreed the Ballot Board erred in splitting the proposed voting-access amendment.

Read related coverage:

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