Our 2026 Ballot Access Drive
The Ohio Forward Party needs to collect roughly 57,000 valid signatures of Ohio voters by June 30th, 2026 to become a recognized minor party in Ohio. Becoming a minor party allows us to fundraise as a political party in Ohio and to easily place candidates on the General Election Ballot under the Forward Party.
We’re setting a goal of 120,000 signatures by June 1st, 2026. Collecting twice as many signatures as required will provide us plenty of room for signatures that might be invalidated for signature mismatch, outdated voter registration data, or ineligible signers.
We’re confident we can achieve this goal but we’ll need your help!
How to Help
We are starting with a slow rollout of our petitioning before we ramp up with tabling and events in Spring and Summer 2025.
Download and Print the Petition and ask your family and friends to sign. No need to pound the pavement, let’s start simple!
The Petition must be printed on Legal Sized Paper (8.5 x 14) and must be printed front and back. If you can’t print your own at home, you can have them printed at office supply stores like Staples, OfficeMax, or FedEx. We are also working on setting up distribution networks through our volunteers and local chapters. So if you can’t get a petition now, you’ll be able to very soon.
RSVP for our petition training. We’ll cover:
- How to Petition
- Petitioning Best Practices
- How to talk about Forward
Sign up and be a volunteer!
To support our petitioning efforts we need volunteers willing to do any of the following:
- Lead Petitioning Trainings Online
- Distribute and Collect Petitions
- Start a Local Chapter
Petitioning Quick Facts
To sign the Ohio Forward Party ballot access petition, you must be:
- A registered voter in Ohio (if you are qualified to vote but have not registered, you can register online with an Ohio driver’s license or Ohio identification card number: https://olvr.ohiosos.gov/)
When signing:
- Provide your signature as matches your voter registration
- Provide the address you are registered to vote at (you can update your voter address online https://olvr.ohiosos.gov/ )
- All petitions must be signed in blue or black ink.
- Signatures must be made in cursive-type writing, unless a voter has a disability, in which case the person may sign through any reasonable accommodation, including the use of assistive technology.
- Signatures must match that on file with the board of elections.
- Illegible signatures will be invalidated if both the signature and address are unreadable, such that it is impossible for board personnel to query the board’s voter registration system to check the signature against a record.
- The signer must be registered to vote at the address provided on the petition as of the date the petition is filed. A signature will be invalidated if the address listed by the signer does not match the voter’s registration record at the time the petition is filed.
- Every signature must be witnessed by the petition circulator.
- Petition circulators CANNOT sign their own petition.
- Each petition must contain signatures from only one county.
Returning Signed Petitions
Thank you for collecting signatures to put Forward on the ballot and getting us one step closer to giving Ohioans a real voice in government! Please click the Submit Petitions button below to fill out our signature tracking form.
This form is to enable good record keeping and timely tracking of our progress toward our signature goal. Please fill it out completely and someone will reach out to you ASAP. While you wait for us to get back to you, PLEASE keep signed petitions in a safe location and do not lose them!