This story was originally published by Signal Ohio. Sign up for their free newsletters at SignalOhio.org/subscribe.

A citizen group seeking to abolish property taxes in Ohio is giving up on getting its amendment on the November 2026 ballot, and is pivoting toward the November 2027 election instead, the group’s leader said Friday.

Brian Massie said the Committee to Abolish Ohio Property Taxes made the announcement in a podcast interview on Friday, about four weeks before a July 1 legal deadline by which the group would have had to submit hundreds of thousands of voter signatures to qualify for the November 2026 ballot.

Explaining the decision, Massie said the group fell short of its goal to collect 620,000 voter signatures – significantly more than the 413,488 legal minimum. The group had sought to collect extra signatures to make up for a significant number they expected to be rejected as invalid.

Since the group is now working toward the November 2027 election, it will have another year to collect signatures. The existing signatures the group collected can still count if and when it submits amendment paperwork next year. But more signatures are likely to be found invalid as they grow outdated, since a signature only counts if it includes the voter’s current registered address.

In an interview on Friday, Massie said the group now plans to try to collect more than 620,000 signatures.

“Our track that we’re on right now seems to indicate that we will,” he said. “I can’t be sure until I actually see them.”

Massie wouldn’t say how many signatures his group has collected. The group announced in April it had collected 320,000, a move it had hoped would spur additional public support.

“We the people have declared war on our politicians at the state level,” Massie said during the Friday podcast, called Ohio Political News, where he announced the group had given up on the 2026 election. “When you are at war, you never give the enemy any intel.”

The amendment campaign so far seems to lack the resources that a ballot issue typically requires to qualify for the ballot. But amendment backers’ progress nonetheless has alarmed state leaders in government, business and organized labor, who worried that eliminating $21 billion in tax revenue overnight would devastate schools and other local government services.

A coalition of groups organizing to oppose the amendment issued a statement on Friday reacting to the news.

“As a petition drive continues for a reckless property tax abolishment amendment, our non-partisan, broad-based coalition will sustain our public education campaign on the serious consequences that are at stake,” said Ohioans to Protect Public Services spokesperson Jen Detwiler. “Ohioans deserve real property tax reform, not a constitutional amendment that wipes out more than $21 billion in local funding with no plan for what comes next.”

The political fallout

A property tax abolition amendment likely would have attracted intense voter interest. The fact that it won’t be on the November 2026 ballot, when Ohioans will decide races for governor, U.S. Senate, the state legislature and other key offices, removes an X-factor that could have loomed large over the midterm elections.

Instead, the amendment now could appear on the November 2027 ballot, when there aren’t any statewide candidate elections. Typically, issues-only elections see much lower voter turnout, although that’s not always the case – see the November 2023 election, when voters approved an abortion-rights amendment.

State Democrats have signaled they are targeting the November 2027 ballot for a potential redistricting reform amendment, which could drive its own set of political conditions.

Massie said supporters have already begun debating whether the property tax abolition amendment’s chances of passage will be helped or hurt by waiting for a year.

“I can’t worry about things that I can’t control,” Massie said. “[We’re] just messengers for the people, what’s in their best interest.”

Signal Ohio is a nonprofit news organization covering government, education, health, economy and public safety.