Petitions containing nearly 1.3 million signatures of Ohio voters favoring the repeal of Senate Bill 5 were delivered to the office of Secretary of State Jon Husted about an hour ago. A parade of roughly 6,000 people accompanied the truck containing the over 1,500 boxes of petitions.
To put the numbers in perspective:
Signatures turned in today: 1,298,301.
Previous record for a statewide petition: 812,978, for a 2008 casino issue that failed in November. Today's total beat the old record by nearly 60 percent.
State population (2010 Census): 11,536,504. Over 11 percent of the state's population signed the petitions.
Total votes cast in last year's Ohio gubernatorial election: 3,852,469.
SB5 is now prevented from taking effect until after the November election, and if today's totals are any indication, we may have seen the last of it.