2003 Ohio 7152 | Ohio Ct. App. | 2003
{¶ 2} The Coalition and the Committee filed the petition with the Secretary of State. As provided by R.C.
{¶ 3} The BOE initiated this action in the Hamilton County Common Pleas Court in response to a ballot-initiative protest filed by Keith Brooks, an elector from Franklin County, Ohio, ("the protestor"). Following a hearing, the court ruled that some of the part-petitions were invalid, and that Ohio's requirement for a compensation statement was constitutional. The Coalition and the Committee now appeal. The protestor has filed a cross-appeal.
{¶ 4} The BOE has filed a motion to dismiss the appeal and the cross-appeal. The BOE argues that the appeal and the cross-appeal should be dismissed because Ohio's election statutes do not provide for appellate review of a decision of the common pleas court, and further that the decision of the common pleas court in this case was not a final appealable order. For the following reasons, we grant the BOE's motion to dismiss.
{¶ 5} Section
{¶ 6} R.C.
{¶ 7} The Ohio Constitution provides that the state's legislative power is vested in its general assembly, "but the people reserve to themselves the power to propose to the general assembly laws and amendments to the constitution, and to adopt or reject the same at the polls on a referendum vote."1 This power is known as "the initiative."2 When a timely initiative petition proposing a law has been signed by a designated percentage of the state's electors, has been filed with the secretary of state, and has then been verified, the secretary of state must transmit the petition to the general assembly.3
{¶ 8} Any initiative petition may be presented in separate parts, but each part must contain a full and correct copy of the title and the text of the proposed law.4 Section
{¶ 9} "Elections belong to the political branch of the government and not to the judicial, and are not per se the subject of judicial cognizance, but are matters for political regulation."6 "Since public elections belong to the political branch of the government, they are a matter of political regulation and questions arising in reference to elections are subject to judicial review or cognizance only in limited areas * * *. [Citations omitted.] As such, courts should be very reluctant to interfere with [elections] by the people, except to enforce rights or mandatory or ministerial duties as the statutes require."7 Ohio courts have held that election statutes are mandatory and require strict compliance.8
{¶ 10} Anyone seeking to propose a law by an initiative petition must, by a written petition signed by a certain number of qualified electors, submit the proposed law and a summary of it to the attorney general for examination.9 If the attorney general finds that the summary is a fair and truthful statement of the proposed law, he must so certify the petition.10 A verified copy of the proposed law, together with the summary and the attorney general's certification, must then be filed with the secretary of state.11
{¶ 11} The statutes governing the initiative process provide for an expedited review of an initiative petition following its submission to the secretary of state. The secretary of state is the chief elections officer of the state and is charged with receiving all initiative petitions and determining and certifying their sufficiency.12
{¶ 12} Under R.C.
{¶ 13} In this matter, the protestor filed with the BOE a protest against the BOE's findings made pursuant to R.C.
{¶ 14} Then, the signatures that the court has found to be sufficient and the part-petitions that the court has found to be properly verified must be included with the others by the board of elections.14 The properly verified part-petition and the report of the board must be returned to the secretary of state no fewer than fifty days before the election, "provided that in the case of an initiated law to be presented to the general assembly the boards shall promptly check and return the petitions together with their report."15
{¶ 15} If the petition is found to be insufficient based upon an insufficient number of valid signatures, the committee in charge of the circulation of the petition is allowed ten additional days to obtain additional signatures following notification by the secretary of state.16 Then, the part-petitions of the supplementary petition that appear to the secretary of state to be properly verified, "upon receipt thereof by the secretary of state, shall forthwith beforwarded to the boards of the several counties together with the part-petitions of the original petition which have been properly verified, and shall be immediately examined and passed upon as to the validity and sufficiency of the signatures thereon by each of such boardsand returned within five days to the secretary of state with the boards' report. [Emphasis added]."
{¶ 16} The statutory time restrictions make it clear that the General Assembly did not intend for a protracted appeals process. The statutory scheme provides for review by a common pleas court, which is required to act "forthwith."17 Moreover, the statutes provide no directives to appellate courts with respect to the timeliness of their decisions. The failure of the General Assembly to address further appellate review would indicate that the common pleas court is the final arbiter of an appeal taken pursuant to R.C.
{¶ 17} Accordingly, we conclude that the trial court's order in this case was not appealable because there was no statutory provision for an appeal, and because this court must adhere to the principle that courts should be reluctant to interfere with what is essentially a political matter.18 We therefore dismiss these appeals.
Appeals dismissed.
Hildebrandt, P.J., and Painter, J., concur.
