The timeline for the legal battle over the ballot language for this November's redistricting amendment is cutting it close for Ohio's boards of elections.
Local boards of elections say the ideal day to finalize the ballot language would be end of the day Friday. It's not known whether or not the Ohio Supreme Court will rule Friday on whether the Ohio Ballot Board's approved language will appear on the ballot this November.
This is running against a key date for county boards of elections across the state. Uniformed and overseas citizens' absentee ballots have to be sent out by Sept. 20.
Franklin County Board of Elections spokesman Aaron Sellers said the hope is that a ruling comes Friday.
RELATED: Ohio voter guide: What to know about the 2024 election
"Whenever we get the information, the ruling from the Supreme Court, we will meet whatever deadlines that we have to the 20th. We will get it done, regardless if we have a week, six days, five days, four days, we will get it done," Sellers said.
Supporters of the redistricting amendment filed suit against the Ohio Ballot Board over summary language it approved for the issue in late August. The summary language is what voters will see on the actual ballot, not the amendment itself.
Citizens Not Politicians, the group bringing the amendment forward, said the ballot summary language is not factual, is partisan, misleading, and therefore unconstitutional.
The Republican-dominated Ohio Ballot Board passed a three-page summary written by Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who is a member of the Ohio Redistricting Commission and has voted for all the maps it has approved.
Among LaRose's summary are an accusation that the redistricting amendment would enshrine gerrymandering into the Ohio Constitution.
Sellers says the worst case scenario is that if overseas ballots are sent out and the ballot language is changed, they will send out corrected ballots.
"That would be a worst case scenario. But... these are things that happen every cycle, unfortunately, and we're kind of used to it," Sellers said.
Sellers said Franklin County alone has 1,500 of these ballots. Some are emailed that can be corrected easily and some are paper ballots that require reprinting and remailing.
Sellers also said printing is easy for Franklin County since their printing operations are done in house. He said other counties outsource their ballot printing, making it a bit more difficult.
The next key date for printed ballots is in early October for domestic mail-in ballots to be sent and the start of early in-person voting.
So far, Franklin County has gotten 70,000 mail-in ballot requests, but Sellers said he expects more than 100,000 requests by early October.
