Latest / Taking Initiative / How Signature Gathering Really Works: Ballot Initiative 101
Transcript
- Laura Lucarelli: back to Taking Initiative, our podcast about Ohio's citizen ballot initiative process. I am here again with my co-host Pat Blackmon. How are you, Pat? Patricia Blackmon: I am excellent and how are you doing? Laura Lucarelli: I am well, thank you for joining us again. And I'm really excited to introduce everybody to today's special guest, Richard Margolius. Hello, Richard, welcome. Richard D Margolius: Hi, and I appreciate being invited onto your podcast. I'm looking forward to talking to both of you. Laura Lucarelli: Yeah. As are we. Today's special topic is about signature gathering. As many of us understand, it is an essential but a monumental task and nobody understands that probably better than Richard. He's going to talk to us quite a bit. But to give some background, it is the most arduous and probably costly part of any campaign. To succeed in getting something on the ballot in Ohio, currently an initiative must collect hundreds of thousands of signatures and they can't all do it from one area, they need to be collected from at least 44 of Ohio's 88 counties. So today we'll be talking to Richard who's worked on several campaigns, including Reproductive Freedom, the Citizens Redistricting Commission Initiative in 2024, and the referendum on SB 1 in 2025. And we've talked about all of these in prior episodes, so it's great to talk to somebody who can kind of cross all of that. He's tasted success and personally felt the blow of coming up short. He has quite a bit to share and we can't wait to start this discussion. Are you ready, Richard? Richard D Margolius: I am, let's get at it. Patricia Blackmon: Yes, very good. Richard, as Laura has mentioned, you have been involved in many initiatives. So we'd like you to first tell us about yourself and then explain why you started doing this. Richard D Margolius: Sure. ⁓ I sold my business in 2020. I had always been involved in politics a little bit, but because I had kids and a business to run, I didn't have a whole lot of time to get involved. But once I sold my business, I was looking for opportunities. And really the first opportunity that came up is we were in Washington in May of 2022, right as the Dodd decision was leaked on the Reproductive Freedom Amendment, the reversing Roe v. Wade. We went to a protest rally in front of the Capitol and I said to my wife Barbara that I was going to get involved in this campaign to do something. And we didn't know what we were going to do at the time. And then the opportunity came up to start working on the constitutional amendment. And I actually got in a position to take the lead in Eastern Cuyahoga County ⁓ work closely with the organizers, including Dr. Beene ⁓ to that on the ballot. ⁓ So had an obviously the success to any campaign we had lots of volunteers so it wasn't just me I worked with a team of people ⁓ which is really the only way to make any campaign successful Laura Lucarelli: You can't do it alone, that's for sure. All right, so I have another question for you. So signature gathering has been your focus. And as you said, you certainly can't do that with one person, you need a lot of volunteers. Can you tell us what's involved when you get involved in a campaign? How do you start to organize? What is it that you do to get involved? Richard D Margolius: So the first thing we do, obviously, is there's a group of people above my level who take that initial petition and talk to the attorneys to get it all right so we can appear in front of the ballot board and the attorney general on that first 1,000 signatures. But then I get involved to get the volunteers, get them petitions, make sure they have the proper training to collect signatures, make sure that they know where to go, where the people are, You know, we can go door to door and get, know, three or four signatures an hour, but really want to get on a volunteer basis at least 10 signatures per hour ⁓ to successful at something like this. and the important ⁓ with the Reproductive Freedom any campaign I've worked on is communication with our volunteers make sure they know ⁓ the objective, to ensure they the proper so they know ⁓ the signatures will be valid, which is really important ⁓ and can read addresses and things like that. Laura Lucarelli: Richard, you brought that you need to make sure the volunteers understand. ⁓ ⁓ a signature. How do you prepare people as they go door to door or do canvassing? What does that look like? Richard D Margolius: well we typically don't go door to door will go to places like farmers markets and things like that where there a lot of people ⁓ so we get a lot of signatures because you need a lot of signatures the biggest mistake people make in collecting signatures is it's one petition packet partial petition packet per county and like we'll have a Cuyahoga and someone will sign and they'll be from Lake County and finish it out and it's okay that won't count we got a lot of Lake County signatures so it's important to ask where the person is registered from first. And then a lot of people, we say, well, what address are you registered at? Because sometimes they'll be registered at their parents' house, even though they're temporarily living in an apartment or whatever. So that's really important to get that. And then reasons signatures don't become valid or become stale at some point is people move, people die, ⁓ and of course we can't read their handwriting, so we can't really tell where their address is. What happens is it goes to the Board of Elections in that particular county and the Board of Elections looks up the address and tries to verify the signature to the people who are registered at that address. That's how it becomes valid. We figure about a 70 percent. Volunteers do better than paid collectors. Yeah, paid collectors kind of get paid by the signature so they take less care. But volunteers, for the most part, volunteers are Laura Lucarelli: Interesting. Yeah. Richard D Margolius: really careful about how they collect signatures and they ask, you know, where do you live? Are you registered to vote? Et cetera. And if they're not registered to vote, most of our volunteers will have the forms so they can register to vote. So, and then we have to make sure the Board of Election gets that form before we submit the petition. So that's really important too. Laura Lucarelli: Excellent. Yeah. Pat, remind me again about there's so many requirements around signature gathering. Can you remind me the percentage needed depending on the type of initiative? Patricia Blackmon: Right. And I think sometimes it's better to narrow it to the at least the referendums and the constitutional amendments. The statutes are different in their percentages, but the constitutional amendment is required to have 10 percent of the 44 counties and the threshold number is five percent for signature gathered to across the state. And the reason they do that... Laura Lucarelli: For the gubernatorial, the percentage is off the gubernatorial race, ⁓ Patricia Blackmon: it's the percentage from ⁓ last ⁓ race, which was in 2022. ⁓ that number is somewhere in the neighborhood of over 413,000 votes. And ⁓ order for you to get it on the ballot, ⁓ to win, but to get it on the ballot. So when you're looking at these other percentages, you'll see percentage of 5 % for a constitutional amendment. That's a threshold and it's called the distribution rule. And that distribution rule is specific to the constitutional amendment that you must have 5 % of that county in order to constitute a legitimate group for the petition. And the reason they do that is they don't want you just to concentrate on the big counties and get the initiative done. They want you to concentrate all over those 44 counties. So I would imagine, yeah, there are 88 counties of 44. So I would wonder from Richard if they train or have a system set up where they would be able to handle the threshold. Laura Lucarelli: At least 44 because there are 88. Yeah. Patricia Blackmon: And since the ones that I think you have dealt with mostly have been the constitutional amendment, let's use that 5 % parameter. Richard D Margolius: ⁓ So. ⁓ Obviously we have volunteers and captains who, you one person in each county or multiple counties controlling it so that we ask our volunteers every 10 days or week or depending on how close we are to that July 1st deadline of getting things in to the Secretary of State to turn in their petitions so we can tell where we are in each county. So it's really important to know, you know, that hey, if we're have 40 counties were 5 % and we're short in five counties. We need to know which are the closest five counties so we can concentrate mostly sending paid collectors at that point to just surround the county and get as many signatures as possible. Now you said the 5 % and 10 % overall because we need 10 % overall and 5 % from each county counties like Cuyahoga County. We need to get a lot more than 10 % to compensate for the 5 % we barely get in some of the Republican-leaning counties that are in the state, you know, which are pretty small counties. So we want to get more than 10 percent in Cuyahoga County. Ten percent's the minimum. Laura Lucarelli: So it's no less than 5 % from at least 44 counties, but overall we need an Ohio total of 10 % of the vote. So it just needs to be distributed. Richard D Margolius: Right, exactly right. Right, that's why you always read that you need that 413,000 or whatever it is signatures, valid signatures. So in reality, you need a lot more than that. You need 550,000 or so signatures, because you're going to lose some for not being valid. Especially if you have people collecting and people say, well I don't remember if I signed that or not. Our rule of thumb is, you sign it again, because it doesn't hurt. You won't invalidate both. signatures you'll just invalidate the second signatures when they sign so that's the rule of thumb if people forget and then campaigns like the reproductive freedom campaign we started like in March and turned everything in in July so that was a really short period of time but there are other campaigns that I wasn't involved in that have been going on a couple of years so that one you know those signatures the older signatures will be more stale and people won't remember if they signed. The Not Politicians we started right after Thanksgiving ⁓ collecting signatures. So that about seven months worth of signature gathering. ⁓ Laura Lucarelli: I'd like to dive into some of your direct, the direct campaign work that you did, starting with the Reproductive Freedom. Tell us about, you you said you were in DC, you kind of heard what was coming down with the overturn of Roe v. Wade. you decide that Signature Gathering, and it wasn't just Signature Gathering, were you also on their Speakers Bureau? Richard D Margolius: I was on the Speaker's Bureau for Citizens and Not Politicians. Laura Lucarelli: offense. Richard D Margolius: So I so going back to the reproductive freedom amendment. We're in DC. You know, we knew that Roe v Wade was in danger. This was an essential right of privacy for women to make medical decisions between themselves and their doctor without interference of the government. So this was something that was going to affect my children and grandchildren, you know, and maybe great grandchildren if I'm so lucky. So this was something I wanted to get involved in to protect that right for women. ⁓ So we got involved in that. And that's like an essential right for half the population or 51 percent of the population in the country to be able to have. ⁓ And the government with the Supreme Court was going to take that right away from people. And especially in Ohio, we had this bill called the Heartbeat Bill, which is really a fetal activity, you know, fetal heart activity bill that said After six weeks, you couldn't get an abortion. And many women don't even know they're pregnant by that time. So it was really important that we could do whatever was necessary to reestablish the conditions under Roe v. Wade back into Ohio. And fortunately, there were a lot of people who felt very strongly. With that, including Dr. Beene, who kind of led the effort, and 57 % of the electorate agreed with us in the end. So were on the right side on that one. Laura Lucarelli: I seem to recall that that was a situation, you've worked on at least two campaigns where the ballot board kind of messed with the language that before it got on the ballot itself, that the language was, ⁓ you know, maybe changed and not the most favorable light. Was there concern in that campaign when that happened? Richard D Margolius: Sure. Yeah, there was a lot of concern, know, especially, you know, we talked about the Reproductive Freedom Campaign. They took the word fetus, wherever we had the word fetus in the initial ballot language, they put unborn child just to tug at the heartstrings of people and convince people that, you know, we were baby killers. I mean, I was called all sorts of names during that campaign, which is just part of the process. And then in the Citizens Not Politicians Campaign, of course, they said, that we were trying to gerrymander. And their definition of gerrymandering was drawing any lines no matter what the reason was. So ⁓ they did everything they could to confuse the voters, the Republicans, the Secretary State, Frank La Rose, who had the deciding ⁓ to confuse the ⁓ to manipulate the language so that their side would win. ⁓ And that didn't work in the Reproductive Freedom Amendment. But it did work in the Citizens Not Politicians Amendment. ⁓ they basically said at the end, the Republican chair in Ohio said, our was to confuse the voters. ⁓ And know that a confused voter, ⁓ when read something, they'll typically vote no. ⁓ And what happened. ⁓ Laura Lucarelli: makes my heart drop that our politicians would do that. Richard D Margolius: Yeah, they weren't neutral. You know, and the ballot language should be neutral. It should be written at an eighth grade level of understanding because that's the average in Ohio of reading ability so that the average person can walk in to the ballot booth, close that curtain, and know exactly what they're voting on. And unfortunately, the last two constitutional amendments, that was not the case. But the abortion amendment, the Reproductive Freedom Amendment, was really very clear. People knew where they stood on the issue. So there wasn't a lot of confusion walking in, even though they tried. But unfortunately, the gerrymandering, ⁓ anti-gerrymandering ballot constitutional amendment, people were confused. I mean, even the signage that the Republicans put out was confusing. Patricia Blackmon: So, Richard Do you think it was confusing because of the, no matter how you read it, when you see gerrymandering, the majority, and at least I think I heard this from ⁓ the former Supreme Court Justice, Maureen O'Connor, who said that, made a statement to this effect that if it was on the ballot and the people saw gerrymandering, they initially wanted no, and so they would cross the board vote no instead of yes which is what you wanted them to vote for to have a civil commission. Richard D Margolius: Right, well, yes, sure. And there was more to it, of course, because we had issue one in August where we encouraged people to vote no. And then just a few months later, we had issue one in November where we encouraged people to vote yes. So everything that the government did, the Republicans in charge did, was meant to confuse the voter. So they tried to take majority rule away. They failed at that. The purpose of that amendment in August was just to stop the Reproductive Freedom Amendment, failed. ⁓ And we had enough publicity and there were enough knowledgeable people that people knew that the government has no right to be involved in medical decisions for women. So we won. Laura Lucarelli: I had heard as we started getting involved in the work for Ohio ballot protection that, you know, yes, there were two case studies of the ballot board changing language. But to your point, people already had really strong opinions about abortion and rights to medical care and somehow read past those words or were not impacted by them. ⁓ interesting how the words behind this become so important. Which brings me to my next question. You were on the Speaker's Bureau for issue one. Can you talk to us about what that is, what that means, and kind of your approach to it? Richard D Margolius: So, sure, so for the Citizens Not Politicians campaign. issue one, which they're all issue ones, of course we're not going to have issue one in for another thousand years or whatever, and that's a different story, that we would go out and speak to any group who wanted to learn about the issue and the reasons for gerrymandering. And it's really easy because once I could put up on a screen crazy districts that were drawn to loop in different sex of voters so that the politicians were choosing the voters instead of the voters choosing the politicians, it was easy. So we had those people. It was the rest of the people who were confused by the issue, who didn't know enough and just voted no. You remember the hard signs that said, you know, vote no on issue one to stop gerrymandering and vote yes on issue one to stop gerrymandering. It was all the same. Now, it would have been better in hindsight say vote yes for fair maps instead of to stop gerrymandering because a lot of people didn't even understand what gerrymandering was. Patricia Blackmon: ⁓ you see this happening ⁓ on one issue, how do you take information to next initiative? Like you went from reproductive rights to the citizens redistricting and try to learn from it and not not have the same issues come up, especially with the ballot board. because that's what kind of happened in terms of how it was written for the ballot. Richard D Margolius: what I've learned ⁓ that ⁓ really hard ⁓ stop the people in power from doing dishonest things. ⁓ Frank La Rose did everything he could in his ⁓ to ⁓ dishonest, confusing ballot ⁓ The most important thing I ⁓ is that we need a Democratic Secretary of who will write fair and honest ballot language because truly the only way to fix things is at the ballot box in November. It's unfortunate, but the Republicans, this type of Republican, not all Republicans, but this type of Republican who are in charge right now are just not being fair to the entire electorate in Ohio. And the biggest example I can give to that right now, today, is we passed the Reproductive Freedom Amendment. All right? Laura Lucarelli: Yeah, I'm glad you're saying that. Richard D Margolius: We made that a constitutional amendment. Right now, House Bill 347. is on there to instill the 24-hour waiting period again. We know that's unconstitutional. They tried to do that once before. And yet here it is, House Republicans in the House of Representatives in Ohio are trying again to stop women from exercising their free right under the Ohio Constitution. So it's really sad. We need to fix things at the ballot box. We need to encourage people to vote. ⁓ Really, really important. Laura Lucarelli: If I can, I'd like to rewind to at least a third campaign that you worked on. ⁓ We interviewed ⁓ Professor Mandy Fehlbaum, professor from Youngstown State University SB1 last year and really made a good run to try to get a referendum on last year's ballot. They did fall a little short, but as a grassroots effort, they made it pretty far. Richard D Margolius: Sure. Laura Lucarelli: You were involved in that. love your insight and what it was to work on that campaign. Richard D Margolius: Okay, so that was a really interesting campaign because of course of the referendum we have 90 days from the time the governor signs the bill to put a referendum and stop the bill from taking effect until the voters vote on it in November. Couple problems, one is that right at the beginning there was no organized activity at all. And Mandy and a couple of her colleagues in Youngstown State basically said, hey, nobody else is doing this. We need to try to fix this and start a referendum. So they started, they started a little late. They made some initial mistakes with that initial thousand signature petition. They had to redo that. And then Attorney General took the full 10 days and said, oops, you made a mistake, you need resubmit. So ⁓ another 10 days went by. ⁓ So at the ⁓ instead of 90 days, we only had approximately days to collect the needed. And we did really well in Cuyahoga County. collected, you need six, three percent and six percent as you said. collected slightly over nine percent. And I say we, ⁓ Kate and I chaired this ⁓ and was great. She really is ⁓ in Ohio Cuyahoga County. She was dynamic ⁓ and could not have done anything without her. ⁓ Laura Lucarelli: Northeast Ohio, yeah. Richard D Margolius: But we had problems in other counties. So we fell short overall with the number of signatures, but we also fell short in the number of counties. So getting into the overall picture, you need to pick an issue that everybody understands. There was a lack of understanding of what SB1 would do because not everybody is affected by college campuses and what's going on. Everybody knew about abortion. That was an easy one. We didn't have to explain everything. Citizens, not politicians, was something with anti-gerrymandering that we had to explain to people the effects of that. We had to explain to people that if the state voted 55-45, Republican to Democrat, and the Ohio Senate was at that point 79 % Republican, that was gerrymandering. That was unfair, and that was taking the voice away from the people. And that was politicians picking their voters. So it took a lot of explanation per signature, so it took longer. then when we got to SB1, it even longer because we had to explain, ⁓ you what SB1 did, how it affected college campuses, ⁓ how affected DEI on college campuses, which is what it eliminated, ⁓ and it affected union representation on college campuses. ⁓ We did well in Cuyahoga County, but other places in the state, especially southeastern Ohio, we didn't do so well on signature collection. So what we've learned from that is that one, it takes money. You've got to have money. You have to have really, really dedicated volunteers. And then you've got to have an issue that is easily explainable. So right at the beginning of SB1, we didn't have enough money print the petitions that we needed. ⁓ So had to hold back on the number of petitions we gave out to volunteers. So they could only carry one or two counties instead of three or four counties, which is what you need in Cuyahoga County, because we get people from Geauga ⁓ going to all sorts of events. We're a big community. Patricia Blackmon: based on the research I did just looking at a referendum it is very difficult if you go back to like 1913 in Ohio there've only been 13 referendums and only two have passed can you kind of enlighten us on that if at all Richard D Margolius: Sure, think the last one was SB5. Yes, so that was successful because it was an anti-union type of issue and all the unions jumped right on board. So we had support throughout the state ⁓ and had no problems collecting signatures. I wasn't involved in that campaign, but that's what people told me. And it was successful in November. So that was the last successful referendum we had in Ohio. So obviously, if you haven't had one as successful, 15 years, it's really hard to do. And we see that with the cannabis referendum that just failed ⁓ They ⁓ started out without money. Then apparently, from what I read in the papers, I wasn't involved. ⁓ They had some paid collectors, ⁓ but then ⁓ the must have out. ⁓ And then at the the only place they were collecting signatures ⁓ were at retail outlets you could buy cannabis or marijuana. ⁓ Laura Lucarelli: It's a pretty small community, yeah. Richard D Margolius: Yeah, and so that was destined for failure. There are a couple more out there, constitutional amendments that we'll see what happens in July. qualified immunity one has been going on a couple of years. I remember when I was in Columbus in 2023 or maybe 2024, I signed a petition for that. that's now two years been going on Laura Lucarelli: I know the petition is still active. I was at something recently and they were circulating. you know, of course it's the momentum of the circulation that's going to get them on the ballot. we'll see. They have until July, right, to make the November ballot. Richard D Margolius: If they choose to submit the signatures by July, they could always say, you know what, we don't have enough signatures, we'll wait another year to submit the signatures. Referendum obviously is different. You only have 90 days. At the end of 90 days, if you don't submit it, the law takes effect. So at any point, they could submit signatures. But again, you get a signature on a petition that's two or three years old. Odds are that person has moved ⁓ or perhaps deceased. Laura Lucarelli: Hold on. Richard D Margolius: or moved out of state, whatever, it's really hard when your signatures are that old. They become very stale very quickly and your validation rate is going to drop 60%, 50%, I don't know, we'll see. Laura Lucarelli: ⁓ Just to rewind to referendum, because you have to move on those so Do you have recommendations for a recipe for success for a referendum to actually get on the ballot? You mentioned the SB 5 one, because it impacted unions, and unions have a distribution list and active people. ⁓ If you could, what is the recipe for success to get a referendum at least on the ballot. Richard D Margolius: getting a referendum onto the ballot ⁓ is first, ⁓ follow the in the House and Ohio Senate. Don't wait until the governor signs it into law. ⁓ Be prepared. ⁓ If you're to it, down and testify, ⁓ get on record that this bad ⁓ and ⁓ build support right the that this is a bad piece of legislation ⁓ that if it's signed into ⁓ that we're gonna do something it so people know. ahead of time that hey, Bill XXX, whatever that is, or Senate Bill Y is bad. If the governor signs it into law, we're gonna have our petition ready to go to collect signatures because we know what's on it. There may be some minor tweaking to pace, depends on what the law looks like at the end, but you gotta be ready right on day one to start collecting signatures. You can't wait till the governor signs it. Two, make sure you've got dedicated volunteers ready to go so when those petitions are ready from the printer you can get them out there to the public and getting start signing so that you have the opportunity to enough signatures ⁓ that that 90 day period you can stop the law from taking effect. ⁓ three, ⁓ a dedicated group of captains. so if don't know what's on in all the counties, you're never going to be successful because you don't know where to put your And then the final thing, of course, if you have an angel who wants to donate a lot of money, that's really, really important to making any campaign successful. Patricia Blackmon: As a judge and as a lawyer, issues come up on the ballot. I don't think I've paid much attention to the aspect. I saw many people circulate petitions, but it just never resonated with me how until I started devin into this process how deep and how important it is as a citizen to be involved in things of this nature. And I just wonder if you have any comments on Richard D Margolius: Yeah, I think overall. We have only 50 or 55 percent of the electorate voting in any election except the presidential election when you get a turnout around 72 percent. So it's really important for citizens. It's your duty as a citizen. That's the one responsibility you have as a citizen in our country is voting. And we want to inform voters. So we want people to join groups like the League of Women Voters who will put out nonpartisan information information and they'll mail it to your house. You can go to a website and look, but you got to educate yourself on the ballot. And certainly any campaign. I'm involved in a political campaign right now. We need enough money so we can mail out information to voters and print yard signs and literature to hand out and things like that. So you'll start to see stuff on your social media from paid political candidates. but you had the same thing with issues. So we had commercials for Citizens Not politicians out there. But ⁓ was confusing to a lot of people. don't an ⁓ why an individual, isn't ⁓ informed about the ballot. you know, download ballot from local of elections. Look what's the ballot. If you have questions, ⁓ ask a Laura Lucarelli: Yeah. Richard D Margolius: neighbor, you know, see what's going on or go to an event. I mean, we have lots of an event for a candidate that I'm supporting right now. Come learn about the candidate and see, you know, and make your own decision on what's best for the country and best for the citizens of Ohio. Patricia Blackmon: I guess I looked at it in a different way ⁓ because I campaigned as a judge. So I understand the process. But it's almost as if the last word. is always going to come from the citizens. And that's what ballot initiatives does. It's a last word. And we should take it very serious whenever we are involved in it and not just say, ⁓ that's just this group trying to change the law. And I love the Citizens Not Politicians, because I think it gave a whole different definition to what was actually happening with redistricting. And then you didn't have to get into the word, at least that's what I thought. You didn't have to get into the language of gerrymandering because that can be so negative and confusing for people. And I just thought, you are the citizens who make the laws because you elect the General Assembly and you can unelect the General Assembly. So it's these things that you as voters do ⁓ that our founders gave them this magnificent opportunity to participate in their government. I think that's where I was getting at. Richard D Margolius: Yeah, and I agree with you, absolutely. The problem we have right now in Ohio and many other states across the country is a gerrymandered legislation that doesn't follow the will of the people. we know that with the Reproductive Freedom Amendment that they put out this heartbeat bill that wanted to stop abortions at six weeks, but that didn't represent the will of the people because we know 57 % approved it. The same with marijuana, the initiative that was approved in 2023. That was approved as a legislative initiative and instead of respecting the will of the voters, the legislature and along with the governor signed a bill that drastically altered the vote we took in November of 2023. So that even it's illegal to buy marijuana in Michigan and transport it into Ohio. So there are lots of things. If we can fix gerrymandering in Ohio and have an independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, I think a lot of these other issues of the politicians not following the will of the voters will take care of themselves. In the meantime, it's really important as a citizen that we pay attention attention to what the politicians are doing and if they're doing something wrong call them on it and certainly this goes you know for federal right now with the federal save act in front of the United States Senate you know where they essentially want to make it really difficult for a woman who changes her name when she gets married to register to vote we need to make sure that our elected senators vote against that and I don't think that'll happen but at least we Laura Lucarelli: Yes. Richard D Margolius: should make our voices known to senators Husted and Marino that they're not representing the will of the people. Laura Lucarelli: I know a number of people that have been speaking up. It's, you know, can we get through? Will they actually listen to their constituents? And that's where, you know, It's a lot of work, but a citizen led initiative on the ballot needs to be protected. And we have to keep using this power and we have to understand that this is an important way to break through when it's needed. So thank you, Richard, for all the work you've done for the people of Ohio on several campaigns, three that you've talked about, but I'm guessing you're going to keep being involved and I hope you will. Love your outlook. Thank you for the words of wisdom you shared with us today. Is there anything else that you'd like to say in parting? Richard D Margolius: no i appreciate that work that you are doing in getting the word out to the public and thank you for inviting me very much ⁓ fun being here