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Grassroots Referendum: Inside the Campaign to Defeat Ohio SB 1 · Taking Initiative

• Mandy Fehlbaum: I'm happy to be here. Laura Lucarelli: So let's get to know you. Tell us about yourself. Mandy Fehlbaum: I'm an associate professor of sociology and director of women's and gender studies at Youngstown State University. I've been there since 2014. I did my graduate work ⁓ at the University of Texas at Dallas, as well as the University of Oklahoma. I come from a background that's a lot more conservative, used to living in a red state, born and raised there. Come to Ohio whenever I first got here, it was a lot more blue and then became purple and now it's a lot more red. But in any case, it was not so much a culture shock, but one thing that was different about Ohio compared to living where I was before was that I thought that there was a lot more opportunity for the voters to be heard here as opposed to there. Laura Lucarelli: If you would take us back to SB1. It was introduced actually in January of 2025 and two months later it was signed into law. Like how closely were you watching this and when did the idea hatch that a referendum could even be attempted? Mandy Fehlbaum: Sure. We were watching it very closely as faculty. We had watched its predecessor SB 83, which did fail, but the fact that they brought it back with a vengeance in SB 1 and that it was the first Senate bill, state bill that was proposed showed how much they wanted to get it done. This was Jerry Cirino's baby. you know, looking in hindsight, SB1 a lot elements that hurt collective bargaining, should say, that do not ⁓ help ⁓ keep collective at university level ⁓ and could potentially lead collective bargaining across the state being ⁓ really ⁓ hurt. Laura Lucarelli: So watching SB1 come through and come through so quickly or what felt quick, ⁓ at what point did you jump in and say, we got to start getting organized now? Like on the timeline, how did that happen? Mandy Fehlbaum: Mm. I remember in February, I believe I went to a legislative dinner OEA had in my area. And one of the things that we discussed was the need to really pay attention and get started on anti 1 efforts. We knew like there were messages calling for people submit their testimony, to go and protest at the state level. ⁓ And ⁓ lots of that on all of it was ignored by the legislators. ⁓ And one of the things brought up at this legislative dinner, ⁓ which was attended by the treasurer was we need to start thinking about a referendum effort. I got a little bit of pushback against that, just mentioning how expensive legislative referendums are. ⁓ I was like, OK, OK. then it passed in And we contacted ⁓ my other co-organizers, I contacted OEA asking, OK, what are next steps? What are we going to do? Will you help us craft language for this petition? And we waited and we waited and wasted, I would say, two weeks waiting for them to get back to us for them to say, yeah, we're not really going to get involved in this part of it. Yeah. So that was very disappointing. And we also heard from AAUP telling us, you know, we do not have the money to get involved in this. Laura Lucarelli: And what is AAUP just for those who don't know? Mandy Fehlbaum: AAUP is the American Association of University Professors. So for universities, are three main unions, well, educators, three main unions. You have Ohio Education Association, OEA, which is what YSU is a part of. You have AAUP, American Association of University Professors, which is what, for instance, Kent State is a part of. And you have Ohio Federation of Teachers. education wide, ⁓ that is like the third option unions in Ohio. So ⁓ AAUP was like, we don't have for this. Our testing given SB83 was showing that ⁓ even if we got it to voters, it would not go your way. ⁓ And ⁓ at that point, I at, the signature collection phase of just getting it to the actual petition phase. So there are two phases for signature collecting. The first phase of signature collecting is getting your petition approved. So you have to collect a thousand signatures across the state in order to get the petition approved. Once the petition is approved, then you have to get at least half of the counties signatures to a certain threshold. It gets really complicated. Laura Lucarelli: Pat, I know you really understand this process. I wonder if you can just give us an overview of what happens with a referendum. Patricia Blackmon: as you know, the referendum all citizen initiatives constitutionally sanctioned. ⁓ And so 2 says specifically what they can do. But the process actually created through revised code of the statutes. And that revised code says things. For example, you must ⁓ have 1,000 votes. on the petition and those voters have to be entitled to vote. And so once the petition is signed, and I think in the Youngstown group, they had over 4,500 signatures that was way above, but you still have this other process. You have to wait until the law becomes the law. And that didn't happen until the governor signed the bill in March, I think it was like March 28th, 2025. And once Laura Lucarelli: the end, you know, the end of the month. Patricia Blackmon: that's passed, then you can start, but you have to have the Secretary of State and the Attorney General both on board with the language of the petition and what you're asking for. And they were able to do that, but they didn't start until around, am I correct, around May Mandy Fehlbaum: Yes, it signed into law. Then we jumped to start collecting the first thousand signatures to get the petition approved. ⁓ And we really certain the Secretary of State and the Attorney General would sign off on our petition because we've noticed that in the past they reject, they reject, they reject. ⁓ and let us fortunately on the first go. we had to wait for them to approve and they waited like the very, very last minute that they could, which was incredibly frustrating. So we were in this holding pattern, ⁓ but in that holding pattern, we were able to collect volunteers. get our infrastructure further set up. we ⁓ divided the state into five different regions and I had regional captains. And then from there, each regional had county captains under them ⁓ or petition captains under them. So the idea was ⁓ that you would have me and my three co-organizers at the top. Then I would have regional captains and then petition captains under them. And then petition captains under them could give the petitions out to other people. So ultimately it was all like a pyramid and having accountability all the way up. We were also able to ⁓ get printer set up and it was important to us to have union printers because we thought given that the legislation is trying to impact unions and our to collectively organize our right to strike, we thought it would be best, you know, for the people that we support to also have some blood in the game, so to speak. I learned how to use Microsoft Word in order to create different numbered because there's not like a booklet on how to get these petitions numbered. Patricia Blackmon: it. Mandy Fehlbaum: so many times I went back and forth because they would tell me like, ⁓ numbers are messed up and I'm like, my gosh. It was chaos. But ⁓ ultimately got a system set up. So I could say like, okay, the petitions that start with ⁓ the number are going to be in Northeast Ohio. If they start with a number two, they're going to be in Northwest Ohio, et cetera, et cetera. That way we could sort of know like, where did these petitions come from or where they're linked to, just trying to have some sort of sense to all the madness. Patricia Blackmon: One of the things ⁓ has caused a little bit of confusion for me is that you have go to at least 44 counties out of the 88 counties that we have. And so the question is, how do you manage that? And how do you know when you are in that particular sphere? Mandy Fehlbaum: Yes. Laura Lucarelli: of the 88. Mandy Fehlbaum: Yes. I one of my regional captains is ⁓ absolute with Google Forms and Google Docs and Excel spreadsheet. So he was able to create a tracking system based on the numbers set up on each petition. So each petition was individually numbered. In the training I gave the volunteers, I said, ⁓ I need you to give me updated numbers, you write in the petition number, you tell me how many signatures you have on it, and by keeping that system up to date, we had a fairly good idea of where we were sitting signatures wise. Patricia Blackmon: had 90 days get all the signatures. And so ⁓ then there was, I ⁓ think you started like in May. Mandy Fehlbaum: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Right. Patricia Blackmon: getting the signature, how did that actually work in terms of 90 days when the statute was supposed to go into effect on June, on the last, I think June 27th? Laura Lucarelli: When does the counter start for those 90 days? That's my question. Patricia Blackmon: You're right. Mandy Fehlbaum: The counter starts, yeah, the counter starts as soon as it was signed into legislation. So that wasting two weeks trying to get someone else to help us create the language and whatnot. How the language was created was I found a past petition that was done. I think it was for the ⁓ petition. I saw how it was structured and then I essentially just mimicked that language. Patricia Blackmon: ⁓ Mandy Fehlbaum: wrote it all in and crossed my fingers and hope that was suitable enough. one of attorneys ⁓ who was involved in previous petition campaigns caught on to what we were doing. ⁓ And he's a Youngstown State So he's like, I'm really upset with what's happening. I can advise you ⁓ pro bono right now. And like, that is awesome. So thank you. So we were able to. get some advice from him. So one of the things I learned was with the initial thousand signatures, I thought like, they just need a thousand signatures period. It can be, I can have all the counties on one petition. No, ⁓ each is only for one county. So I had gone to one event where I collected like over a hundred signatures. But since the signatures were all on one petition from different counties, I had to lose like half of those signatures that I had collected. Yeah, because they were like, had Mahoning and Trumbull and Columbiana all on one petition and I needed like separate petitions for them. Laura Lucarelli: because they weren't part of the county. know, ⁓ the end of the day, you collected like two thirds of what was needed by pure grassroots. ⁓ there any paid signature gathering for this? And that is ⁓ rare. Mandy Fehlbaum: Absolutely not. not. Yes, it is incredibly rare that we did not have a lawyer the get go. We did not have paid collection folks. Now we had people knocking on our doors wanting to, ⁓ you know, paid petition saying like, well, you know, you can hire us. And it's like, with what money? Because the majority of money that we collected then went into printing. Laura Lucarelli: Right. Mandy Fehlbaum: Every single petition ⁓ has to be scanned in, in to the physical copy. Toward the end of the campaign, we set up shop in the ⁓ Columbus Library because they have sort of industrial scanners. And we just sat there for hours. The volunteers sat there for hours, you know, from open to close, scanning in petitions, each one individually saved because you have to turn in a hard drive in addition to ⁓ the petitions boxed by county. ⁓ And lot of things that aren't written in any handbook, and it's very unclear. what has to be done. just tried to make it work. And I really think if we had those two weeks, we probably could have gotten it done. Laura Lucarelli: two weeks would have put you over. At what point was it apparent that you had just fallen short? Mandy Fehlbaum: Mm-hmm. waited until the very last hour. It was like at three o'clock that morning on the last day. And we were just like, yeah, we're not going to make it. Patricia Blackmon: Did you know at that time how many signatures you had? Mandy Fehlbaum: We weren't exactly sure because we still had more scanning to do. And I was even getting emails afterward saying like, I still have my petitions. Let me turn them in. And we're like, we had a deadline and we were very clear about these deadlines. Laura Lucarelli: So, you know, they say 2020 hindsight is everything, right? So if you could beam yourself back to January or February when SB1 was even coming through, what do you think could have been done slightly different that would have set you up for success? Mandy Fehlbaum: Mm-hmm. Definitely having the first thousand signatures ready to go as soon as the bill was signed. Having folks trained right away. Having the printer set up right away. Laura Lucarelli: The was signed. Mandy Fehlbaum: One of the things that sort of harmed us was as soon as school was out, the students who were involved in the initial campaign against it, who like protested and did die ins at the Capitol or like wore duct tape on their mouths, they were out. They said, we want the summer to relax ⁓ sort of regroup. That shocking to hear that from them, the Ohio Student Association. did have some students come and help and spend their time helping us do scanning and organizing and things like that, but that they sort of peaced out at the hardest time was difficult. Getting all infrastructure set up earlier would have helped a lot. Patricia Blackmon: So one question that keeps coming up is ⁓ many signatures did you actually have at the final ⁓ and how did you know or learn about it? Laura Lucarelli: looks like the campaign collected about 195,000 signatures 33 of the counties had met the requirements. So there were another 11, know, shy of the minimum, it sounds like. Mandy Fehlbaum: Right. repeal petition, it's only 3%, not the So the 3 % threshold was still a I wish we could have gotten a bit more in our southeast counties. ⁓ Those are really hard to get, period. It's just so and spread out to try to like, have a spot where you're just gonna set up shop, so to speak, like I'm going to be at this location at this time and come sign. was really difficult to even find those sorts of locations and events things like that. One thing that really us in June, that's Pride Month. ⁓ And because SB1 was cutting DEI initiatives, we able go and petition at Pride Month. Laura Lucarelli: CEI. Mandy Fehlbaum: events ⁓ that really helped us but whenever I'm talking about like more rural counties that don't have Pride celebrations, it's really, what do you go to an event to try to collect and being allowed at certain events. Like I tried to go to a local event that was a ribs and barbecue ⁓ cook-off type thing and I was kicked out of the parking lot because they're like, this is private property and you can't be here. I think I were collecting for a different petition, that they would have been more open to me being there. But alas, they were like, we don't understand yours. Get Patricia Blackmon: Yeah. Mandy Fehlbaum: So. Laura Lucarelli: It now being enacted, how does that your job? How does it change the student experience? Just give us a quick overview of what it means that SB1 is now law. Mandy Fehlbaum: For my job, means that tenure is basically pointless now. Tenure provides no protections whatsoever. It has made it so that professors are reluctant to even include some topics in their classroom. For instance, I know of a colleague who was going to share data that was delineated by ⁓ sex and race and they thought that they weren't allowed to share that data anymore because it addresses sex and race and sex and race are somehow linked to DEI and it's like that's sort of bananas that you would go so far to censor yourself in that way. On the other hand, I'm still doing what I'm doing in the classroom. I'm still teaching the Turnaway Study, which is about abortion, in my intro to women's studies class. ⁓ And I a point to say like, this is not trying to indoctrinate you to one side or the other. There are both sides considered within the Turnaway Study. It just acknowledges that ⁓ if are deprived their reproductive rights, that the outcomes for them are a lot more difficult than someone who is able to get an abortion when they need it. I'm teaching my minority groups class, which covers race and ethnicity. ⁓ And I talk about all races and ethnicities. And ⁓ it does me in there are complaint lines set up in universities for students to voice their dissatisfaction with what's being on in the classroom. There is the mandatory question on our evaluations asking did this instructor create an atmosphere free of bias? And I don't know if the students are actually saying that I created an atmosphere that was biased or if they're just mad at me because they made a D or F in my class and that's one way to get back at me. So it is really frightening times. I have a smaller program. I'm the only full-time faculty member in sociology. The others have retired ⁓ and part of SB1 that says, if you do not have, let's see, it's, ⁓ I want to say five people graduating on average every three years, then your program is cut. I just met the average. If someone decides to drop out of my program, then my program is gone. I don't know if they'll still keep me on because as a full time tenured faculty member, I'm a lot more expensive than an adjunct that they could bring in. And as I said, tenure provides no protections anymore. You know, some unscrupulous professors might be like, everyone gets A's now so that everyone is happy and everyone decides to join my major so that I keep my numbers up. I'm not an unscrupulous professor, but, if you're trying out how the university system is messed up and that's why they have the act that they do, that's a way to mess up the university system even more. Laura Lucarelli: Patricia, what I'd like to do is ask you, had you looked into HB698, that's the proposed enforcement bill. What is that? Did you look into that and how does that connect with this? Patricia Blackmon: Well, I did look into it and it is very, to me it's unclear. because it affects several laws that are already on the book. But it actually affects the cost. So if you are penalized in some way for violating the DEI or the faculty striking during the collective bargaining, then you could indeed be penalized. The university could be. So you're not talking about just a penalty that has to do with you won't get this money, but they're actually connecting it to the shared fund. And when that happens, it becomes very problematic. It was proposed in February of this year. ⁓ It's still in the and they have a lot of work to do on it. So is an enforcement bill, you kind of think that when Senate Bill 1 was passed that it had all of the trimmings in it and processes, but this particular legislature decided that it didn't and therefore they needed to be more specific. Mandy Fehlbaum: My understanding that new House bill is that Representative Young doesn't think that SB1 went far enough to root out DEI. He thinks that they have just like changed the names of certain things and that these people are still doing DEI for certain. So if you have someone hired in a formerly DEI role, but you put them in a role that is something like university belonging instead of diversity, equity and inclusion. That is not going far enough. You need to put that staff member in alumni relations or bursar's office or registrar instead. And you need to have all the administrators sign, you know, officially that they have done that, that that person is not doing DEI work anymore whatsoever. Part of the problem is they did not define in SB1. of the things we warned about in our campaign was that they would not allow us to have warrior awareness training anymore because veteran status is you know, part of DEI. It is something that makes a student body diverse. Veterans have certain aspects. ⁓ that's why warrior awareness training exists so that you can know like, OK, in your classroom, ⁓ have this certain population that might have different needs. And we ⁓ said that would not anymore. ⁓ matter of fact, warrior awareness training continued to happen. ⁓ And we were like, wait a minute, is DEI. Why are you allowing warrior awareness training, but you won't allow, for instance, LGBTQ safe zone training anymore? ⁓ And we brought this up to the And the university said, we are complying with SB1, warrior awareness training is not DEI. So then we asked the Attorney general like, what's the deal? This is part of DEI. ⁓ And the Attorney general said, well, don't weigh in on these sorts of things. It's up to the university to decide whether or not it's DEI, which makes no sense whatsoever. ⁓ And it's like, we're, yeah. Laura Lucarelli: So if they guess wrong, because if they guess wrong, the funding is withheld. Yeah. Mandy Fehlbaum: Yeah, exactly. So why are we letting the university decide on itself? And ⁓ we were trying to do the a solid by saying like, we're not against warrior awareness training. We think it's important. We think it's important to have all sorts of trainings to know our students best. Patricia Blackmon: Yeah. Mandy Fehlbaum: their opinion ⁓ was that, well, certain groups are ⁓ DEI others are not, apparently. Patricia Blackmon: I think that... House Bill 698 actually defines DEI. It uses DEI as the mechanism for control. The penalty is if you're that category, then you are violating the rules that are set by the compliance statute, which is House Bill 698. And it's still, like I said before, still ⁓ so early. Mandy Fehlbaum: Right? Yeah, which makes it. Yeah. Patricia Blackmon: can't wait for the first reading so that we will have an appreciation of what they're trying to do. ⁓ I Representative Young made it pretty clear that it was designed to ⁓ actually set standard for what was going to happen for noncompliance. Laura Lucarelli: Mandy, given you already found a network of people that very quickly mobilized and got you most of the way there, is there any thought of using that network again for anything else that might impact higher ed or something else? mean, that's part of it. It's just building your network. Mandy Fehlbaum: We have thought about it. We spent the whole summer going back and forth. Like, do we want to try do our own thing? Like, try to repeal SB1, period. Like, have a petition campaign that would repeal SB1 and be at that 6% threshold as opposed to the 3% threshold. One of the things we out was it would not be as easy as repealing this one piece of legislation because with petitions from the people, it has to be one subject. Now, if it's coming from a legislator, it can come over two subjects and the two subjects for SB1 were higher education and collective bargaining. So we would have to decide like, OK, would we want to do the higher ed stuff? Or would we want to do the collective bargaining stuff? Or do we want to tell people to have to carry two petitions? people care more about collective bargaining? Do care more about ⁓ higher education? How would that work with Ohio State not being a unionized campus in the same way that ⁓ State is, would that mean that they would be less likely to be on board with that? We're in negotiations right now. And one of the lawyers for the administration has pointed out like he's really surprised that no lawsuits have been brought forward with SB1. ⁓ And it's like, well, lawsuits someone to get hurt. And thus far, no one has hurt by meaning one has gotten fired yet. given SB1 stuff, but it's just a matter of time. The administrations are still scrambling to make sure that they're complying to the best ability to meet everything under SB1 without, I would say, the clearest guidance from the Ohio Department of Higher Education. So we have a number of programs that, as I mentioned, if you don't graduate enough people within three years, you then have your program cut. You were able to apply to get a waiver. And though those waivers were submitted in August, we haven't found out anything about them yet. The whole system was sort of thrown up into the air and we're still having parts fall down and trying to figure out how it's all gonna work. Laura Lucarelli: In closing, ⁓ I want you to celebrate ⁓ what you able to accomplish. ⁓ Again, not paid signature gatherer. You know, figuring how to do the printing, ⁓ to get the language through on the first run to the Attorney General. That is Mandy Fehlbaum: Thank you. Laura Lucarelli: huge success. And you've learned a lot in that if and when you want to do this again, do you feel more ready? Mandy Fehlbaum: I do feel more ready. Knock on I don't want to lose my job, but if I were to lose my job as a result of SB1, then I think I have a new skill set to fall back on. Yeah, several new skill sets to fall back on and several new relationships that I've made as a result of my involvement with SB1 and ⁓ Laura Lucarelli: Several new skill sets, yeah. Mandy Fehlbaum: friendships across the state now. People I can reach out to, people who have reached out to me after House Bill 698 came out and they're like, what can we do? What can we do to get involved right away? And I'm like, just, haven't, it's still in committee. They haven't had any hearings yet. Maybe start preparing ⁓ anti-testimony it, So I'm glad that are still eager and ready to get involved. I don't know what the future holds for higher education in Ohio. I hope that we do not go the way of Florida and Texas with how Draconian they have gotten. You know, I also see how that can be seen as pretty appealing to Jerry Cirino and Representative Young and others at the Ohio General Assembly who still think that things aren't being done right in higher education. tough times this week there was an expose that came out against a Kent State professor who ⁓ talked about DEI the classroom in the terms of education and ⁓ like K-12 education can do diversity, equity and inclusion. And that was spun as, as I said, an expose on conservative websites. And now that professor is receiving threats and it makes me nervous that my course recordings, especially because I teach online most, you know, most often, or even private recordings being done of me could then be used to ⁓ come after me and cancel it's like, if I could indoctrinate my students, would read the syllabus. Laura Lucarelli: Let's start with the basics. Mandy Fehlbaum: Let's start with the basics. They would read the syllabus. They would read the directions. I'm not trying to tell them this is what you should believe. I'm just trying to tell them this is the way the world works. We discrimination in the world. We don't have equity in the world. ⁓ And because we're recognizing that we can work a future that is more more equitable. But we have to acknowledge the problem before we can solve it. Laura Lucarelli: Well said, well said. And Pat is someone who probably has opinions about what she just said. there anything you would like to add as we wrap today? Patricia Blackmon: I think she said it all and I'm really very grateful and you have to be quite courageous. I mean we started this as a learning process to bring to the community ⁓ hoping that it give some inspiration to read more and to learn. Mandy Fehlbaum: That's exactly right. And it's really important to pay attention to what's going on at the state house. way you can prepare to hit the ground running if you don't like legislation. this still exists to where legislation that's been passed, you still have a right to do a referendum against it, a petition referendum. Now it is really hard and a lot of money is needed. It is not for the weak hearted. And Patricia Blackmon: Thanks. Mandy Fehlbaum: It took a lot, but there are people eager and ready to help, especially because they feel so helpless in other ways in our government right now that one way that you can do something is by being willing to talk to your neighbors, ask them to sign a petition, ⁓ inform them about what's going on and let them know that there are still people out there who are willing to put in the legwork. Laura Lucarelli: That's really wonderful that community does come together at times it's needed. So I don't think we've heard the last of you. I'm so grateful for the time you spent with us this afternoon and and ⁓ we'll look to having you on the next time you bring some. ⁓ Mandy Fehlbaum: ⁓ ⁓ thank you. Okay. Yeah, for sure. Laura Lucarelli: Welcome back to Taking Initiative, Ohio's podcast about the Citizen Ballot Initiative process. I'm Laura Lucarelli, co-chair of Ohio Ballot Protection. We are committed to protecting Ohio's direct democracy so voters, not politicians, have the final say and confidence in our democracy. And I'm here with my co-host, Patricia Blackmon. Hello, Pat. Patricia Blackmon: It is wonderful to be back at Taking Initiative with you and our extraordinary guest, Dr. Mandy Fehlbaum. This will be a brilliant conversation. Laura Lucarelli: Agreed. As you know, today we are diving into the power of referendum. Our special guest helped champion efforts to get a referendum in 2025 for Ohio Senate Bill 1. But first, let's take a step back and remind everyone what SB1 was all about. SB1 or the Advanced Ohio Education Act is a law that went into effect in June of 2025. It bans public universities in Ohio from supporting DEI, which is diversity, equity and inclusion, initiatives, offices and mandatory trainings. It also imposed new limits on full time faculty by banning them from striking during contract negotiations. It also prevents institutions from taking a position on what it calls controversial beliefs, including things like immigration policy, climate change, DEI, abortion, and essentially anything that could be considered as the law states the subject of political controversy. Public colleges and universities that do not comply could lose access to their state funding. This is no small change. 14 public universities in Ohio get a combined $312 million annually from the state budget. Ohio State gets the most at around $78 million. Patricia Blackmon: SB1 ⁓ faced strong opposition. Critics said it flew in the face of academic The higher education institutions not be told by the government what they can and cannot teach. ⁓ also worried it would cause brain drain in Ohio, with fewer students staying in the state for college. So group of professors at Youngstown State University decided to do something about it. For context, ⁓ Youngstown State enrolls about 10,000 students and gets about $12 million in state funding. Laura Lucarelli: But if you voted in November 2025, you might not remember seeing that referendum on your ballot. That's because it didn't make the cut. On today's episode of Taking Initiative, we're going to talk about what happened with the SB1 referendum. And in doing so, we'll learn about the hurdles a grassroots group must overcome to actually get their issue in front of voters on election day. So now we get to our special guest, Youngstown State Professor Mandy Fehlbaum, who helped lead the referendum attempt on SB1. Thank you for joining us, Mandy. Patricia Blackmon: After Senate Bill 1 was passed into law in March 2025, the group launched a referendum to repeal the law, which would have gone into effect in June of 2025. the referendum group wanted to ⁓ the law to the voters to decide ⁓ the November 2025 election. ⁓