Guide 12

Ohio Nominating Petitions: A 2027 Guide for Local Candidates

An Ohio nominating petition is the set of signed papers that puts a local candidate's name on the ballot. In 2027, every candidate for a municipal, township, board of education or educational service center office files one, because Ohio has no fee-only or declaration-only route for these offices. State law sets the minimum number of signatures for each office, from 10 for an office in a municipality of fewer than 2,000 people to 300 for a board of education seat in a city school district of 100,000 or more. Charter cities can set their own numbers. Every petition also has a ceiling: a board of elections will not accept a petition that appears to contain more than three times the minimum.

Ohio has two filing deadlines in 2027. Candidates in cities that nominate by party primary, and some charter city and court candidates, file by 4 p.m. on Wednesday, February 3, 2027. Most township, school board, village and nonpartisan city candidates file by 4 p.m. on Wednesday, August 4, 2027, for the general election on Tuesday, November 2, 2027. Signatures go on paper, in ink, and each petition paper carries a statement from its circulator (the person who collected the signatures) signed under penalty of election falsification. No notary is needed. Confirm your track, your signature number and your deadline with your county board of elections before you begin.

Every rule below comes from the Ohio Revised Code (ORC) or from the 2027 schedules published by the Franklin County Board of Elections, which we use as examples and name as such.

Who files a nominating petition in Ohio

Ohio's regular municipal election is held in odd-numbered years, on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November (ORC 3501.01). In 2027 that is Tuesday, November 2, and the primary is Tuesday, May 4. The Franklin County 2027 schedules show the kinds of offices on the ballot: mayors, councils and other city offices; village offices; township trustee and township fiscal officer; city, local and exempted village boards of education and educational service center boards; and municipal court judges.

Each of these candidates files a petition. Townships, and municipalities that elect on a nonpartisan basis, nominate "only by nominating petition" (ORC 3513.251, 3513.253). Ohio law treats all board of education members, judges, and municipal or township officers in places where parties do not hold primaries as nonpartisan candidates (ORC 3501.01(J)).

One limit applies to everyone. You cannot file for two municipal, township, board of education or educational service center positions at the same election, and the board will refuse a second filing (ORC 3513.052, 3513.251).

Which filing track you are on

Your office determines your deadline. A municipality of 2,000 or more nominates its officers either by a party primary or by nominating petition for a nonpartisan general election, as determined under ORC 3513.01. A municipality of fewer than 2,000 nominates only by petition, unless a majority of its voters have petitioned for a primary (ORC 3513.251). Charters add their own variations, so the same office can be on different tracks in neighboring cities.

Both deadlines are 90 days before an election (ORC 3513.05, 3513.251), and both appear on the Franklin County 2027 schedules. Your own county board publishes a schedule listing each office and its deadline, and that schedule is the place to confirm your track.

Independent candidates for offices that hold a party primary file by 4 p.m. the day before the primary, which Franklin County lists as Monday, May 3, 2027 for Hilliard and Reynoldsburg. Their signature number depends on the last vote for governor in the district (ORC 3513.257), so start with your county board.

How many signatures you need

The minimums below come from the Ohio Revised Code. The maximum is three times the minimum for each of these offices.

A minor-party candidate in a party primary needs half the major-party minimum (ORC 3513.05).

Charters often change these numbers. In Franklin County's 2027 schedules, Columbus requires at least 1,000 signatures for mayor and 250 for city council, a five-person nominating committee, and council signers registered in the district. Bexley requires 150 to 300 for mayor and council, a maximum of twice the minimum rather than three times. If you live in a charter city, ask your board for both numbers. We list more examples and explain each requirement in how many signatures you need to run for office in Ohio.

The 2027 petition calendar

Dates marked "based on state law" are computed from the statute's formula and do not yet appear on an official 2027 calendar we could read, so confirm them with your county board.

The board checks signatures by the 78th day before the election, and protests are due by the 74th day (ORC 3513.05 for the February track, ORC 3513.263 for the August track). The write-in dates come from the Franklin County schedules.

Ohio law sets no statewide first day for circulating. Some charters do: Grandview Heights does not count a signature "dated more than 150 days before the General Election." For petitions filed for the November ballot, state law also says a signature dated more than one year before the petition is filed is not valid (ORC 3513.263). Work backward from your deadline, leaving time to review every paper.

The petition paper

The Ohio Revised Code sets out the content of each form, and your county board of elections can give you the current version. The party primary form is a declaration of candidacy followed by a petition (ORC 3513.07). The nonpartisan form is a statement of candidacy followed by a nominating petition (ORC 3513.261). The papers have these parts:

1. The candidate's declaration or statement at the top. You give your voting residence and precinct, the office and term, and sign under penalty of election falsification. On a nonpartisan petition with several papers, you sign the statement on one paper, and it is copied onto every other paper before anyone signs it (ORC 3513.261).
2. A committee to represent you, on the nonpartisan form. Columbus requires five members.
3. The signer lines: signature, street address (the form says to use the address on file with the board), city, village or township, ward, precinct, county and date of signing.
4. The circulator's statement at the bottom, giving the number of signatures and declaring that the circulator witnessed every one.

Every paper also carries the warning "WHOEVER COMMITS ELECTION FALSIFICATION IS GUILTY OF A FELONY OF THE FIFTH DEGREE" (ORC 3501.38(J)). We go through each part line by line in filling out and circulating an Ohio nominating petition.

Who can sign and who can circulate

A signer must be a registered voter living in a precinct where your race will appear on the ballot (ORC 3503.06(B)). Qualification is judged as of the day you file (ORC 3501.38(A)), so a person who moves out of the district before filing day no longer counts. Each signer signs their own name in ink, may also print it, and writes the date and their voting address as it appears in the board's registration records (ORC 3501.38(B), (C)). No one may sign for another person, and if someone signs twice, only the first signature counts (ORC 3501.38(D)). On a party primary petition, signers must also be members of your party: Ohio counts a voter as a member if they voted in that party's primary within the preceding two calendar years, or did not vote in any other party's primary in that time (ORC 3513.05).

A circulator must be an Ohio resident and at least 18 (ORC 3503.06(C)). The statement on the statutory forms also has the circulator declare that they are a qualified elector of Ohio, so registered Ohio voters are the simplest choice. On a party primary petition, each paper is circulated by one person only, who must be the candidate or a member of the candidate's party (ORC 3513.05, 3513.07).

Two rules shape how you hand out papers. Each paper may hold signatures from only one county; if a paper mixes counties, only the signatures from the county with the majority are counted (ORC 3513.05, 3513.261). And if a circulator knowingly lets an unqualified person sign, or lets someone write another person's name, the entire paper is invalid (ORC 3501.38(F)). Our general post on recruiting and training petition circulators uses Illinois examples, but its approach to training applies in Ohio too.

Ink on paper, and no notary

Ohio law says "Signatures shall be affixed in ink" (ORC 3501.38(B)). There is no electronic signature option for candidate petitions, and every signature goes on the paper form in the circulator's presence.

Ohio does not require a notary. Instead, the circulator signs a statement "under penalty of election falsification" that they witnessed every signature, that the signers were qualified to the best of their knowledge, and that each signature is genuine (ORC 3501.38(E)). A false statement carries a criminal penalty, so a circulator should never leave a paper on a counter or pass it around a room.

Protests: how a petition is challenged

After you file, the board checks your signatures, and it may stop once the verified signatures reach the minimum (ORC 3513.05, 3513.251). That is one more reason to file with a margin.

A protest is a written challenge naming specific objections (ORC 3501.39). On the February 3 track, it may be filed by a qualified voter who is a member of your party and eligible to vote for you, or by your party's controlling committee, by 4 p.m. on the 74th day before the primary (ORC 3513.05). On the August 4 track, any qualified voter eligible to vote for you may file one by the 74th day before the general election (ORC 3513.263). The officials who accepted your petition set a hearing, mail notice to both sides, hear the protest and decide. That determination is final.

Many problems that lead to struck signatures can be prevented while you collect:

• signers who are not registered, or who live outside the district;
• addresses that do not match the registration record;
• missing dates, or a person who signed twice;
• papers that mix signers from two counties;
• a circulator's statement that is unsigned or gives the wrong number; and
• on party petitions, signers or a circulator who are not members of the party.

Once filed, nothing on a petition can be changed, corrected or added to (ORC 3501.38(I)), so every fix has to happen before filing day.

How many signatures to collect above the minimum

Because a board can strike signatures, you want more than the minimum. In Ohio the margin also has a ceiling: a petition that appears on its face to contain more than three times the minimum is refused (ORC 3513.05, 3513.251). Size the margin to your risk. A first-time candidate in a contested race, using new volunteers, has more reason to aim high than a candidate whose papers were all gathered by one experienced circulator. Before filing, a circulator may strike signatures they do not want to present (ORC 3501.38(G)), which lets you remove doubtful lines and stay under the cap. Our general guide on how many signatures to collect above the minimum uses Illinois examples, so apply Ohio's three-times cap in place of the ranges it describes.

Collecting signatures door to door

Door-to-door collection suits an Ohio petition. When you work from a list of households inside your district, each signature comes from an address you have already placed there. If each circulator's area sits inside one county, their papers will not mix counties. And a petition visit is often the first conversation a campaign has with someone who will vote in a few months.

To turn your target (the minimum plus your margin, kept under the cap) into doors, track two rates over your first few sessions: the share of doors where someone answers, and the share of those people who sign. As an illustration only, if someone answers at about one door in three and about half of them sign, each signature takes about six doors, and a target of 40 points to roughly 240 doors. Replace the illustration with your own numbers as soon as you have them.

A simple plan works well:

1. Get a list of the households in your district from your county board of elections or your county party, and confirm the boundary.
2. Divide the list into turfs (small groups of nearby streets) that one circulator can cover in a session, each inside one county.
3. Give each circulator their own papers, with the candidate section at the top filled in before any voter signs.
4. Record which doors were visited and what happened at each one.
5. Send circulators back to the doors where no one was home before opening new turf.
6. Collect papers after each session and check every line while the circulator still remembers the street.

This is the part of the work that Beacon is built for. Draw each circulator's turf on the map, inside your district and inside one county, and assign it to that circulator. Add your contacts, and when a walk list is downloaded its stops are in walking order by distance. Beacon routes circulators door to door and records which doors were visited and the result at each one: contacted, not home, refused, come back later and the other door codes. At each door, the circulator can note "signed" or "not signed" in the door result's Notes field, and turf completion percentages and the leaderboard show which areas still need work. If a circulator loses signal partway through a shift, the results they enter are queued and sent when the signal returns. The signed paper remains the only legal record of each signature. Every plan includes unlimited canvassers, so adding circulators does not change your price, and live GPS of circulators in the field is available on the Growth plan and above.

Filing day

Your declaration of candidacy (on the February track) and all of your petition papers are filed at the same time, as one instrument (ORC 3513.05, 3501.38(K)). You cannot add papers later.

• Where: your county board of elections. If your district spans more than one county, file with the board of the county that holds the largest share of the district's population (ORC 3513.05, 3513.261).
• Fees: paid at filing and never refunded. Each has two parts, a filing fee plus an Ohio Election Integrity Commission fee: city office $20 plus $25, for $45; village or township office $10 plus $20, for $30; board of education or educational service center $10 plus $20, for $30; municipal or county court judge $50 plus $30, for $80 (ORC 3513.10).
• When: by 4 p.m. on your deadline.

Before you go, review every paper: the statement at the top, each signer line, the count and signature on each circulator's statement, and the county on each paper. Our general checklist on how to check your petition before filing was written for Illinois, but most of its checks apply to Ohio papers. Keep a copy of every paper and your own count. Filed petitions are public records (ORC 3513.05), and your own records will help you answer a protest quickly.

After you file

Mark the protest deadline for your track and keep the following days clear. After that, your attention turns to the campaign, and every household your circulators visited is one you have already met.

One caution applies. A signature on a nominating petition is not permission to text someone. If you want to text supporters later, never add anything to the official petition paper; keep a separate sign-up sheet that says plainly the person agrees to receive campaign texts, with a dated line. Only people who agreed in that way should receive texts. CampaignCNX+, a separate texting product, can send those texts, and its guide to running for local office in Ohio covers the campaign after filing.

Frequently asked questions

Can I collect Ohio petition signatures online?

No. Ohio law requires that signatures "be affixed in ink" (ORC 3501.38(B)), and the circulator must witness every signature. Digital tools can help you plan which doors to visit and record which ones you reached, but the signatures go on the paper form.

How many signatures do I need to run for school board in Ohio?

For a local or exempted village district, or a city district under 20,000 people, at least 25. City districts need 75, 150 or 300 depending on population (ORC 3513.254). The maximum is three times the minimum.

When is the filing deadline for 2027?

Party primary and some charter and court candidates file by 4 p.m. on Wednesday, February 3, 2027. Most township, school board, village and nonpartisan city candidates file by 4 p.m. on Wednesday, August 4, 2027. Your county board's 2027 schedule lists each office.

Does an Ohio nominating petition need to be notarized?

No. The circulator signs a statement on each paper under penalty of election falsification instead (ORC 3501.38(E)), and it must be accurate, including the number of signatures.

Can I file more signatures than I need?

Yes, up to a limit. A board will not accept a petition that appears to contain more than three times the minimum (ORC 3513.05, 3513.251), and some charters set a lower maximum. You may strike extra or doubtful signatures before filing.

Plan your Ohio petition drive with Beacon

A strong petition comes from visiting the right doors, keeping each paper inside one county, and knowing which streets still need a visit. Beacon gives your circulators turf on a map, walk lists in walking order by distance, and a record of every door's result, with unlimited canvassers on every plan. Start a 14-day trial and have your first turf drawn well before your filing deadline.