Ohio voters won’t see a minimum wage issue
on the ballot this fall.
What happened?
Restaurants, businesses cheer the failure of the
minimum wage campaign to make the November ballot.
Laura Bischoff | Columbus Dispatch | 7.03.2024
The campaign to raise minimum wage in Ohio failed to collect voter signatures in enough counties to qualify for November ballot this year but said they’ll try again in 2025.
One Fair Wage was scheduled to turn petitions on Wednesday to the Ohio Secretary of State but pulled the plug in the evening hours.
Organizers said they failed to collect enough signatures in at least 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties and signature gathering in rural counties was hampered by violence and intimidation directed at non-white canvassers, according to a One Fair Wage statement first reported by Ohio Public Radio & TV.
Overall, they’d need a little more than 413,000 valid voter signatures to qualify for the statewide ballot.
A month ago, the campaign spokeswoman said they had collected more than 460,000 signatures. Petition circulators were still in the field this week. Issue campaigns generally collect extra signatures because often a high percentage of signatures are deemed invalid.
The effort is part of a national campaign run by One Fair Wage that seeks to boost pay to $15 an hour in 15 states. The national campaign has focused on Ohio, Michigan, Massachusetts and Arizona this year.
Secretary of State LaRose blasts campaign
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose blasted the campaign for accusing rural Ohioans of being racist, changing their story about when they’d turn in petitions and blaming his office for failing to provide access to his office building.
“This is a duplicitous, disorganized goat rodeo of a campaign that has made every excuse in the book for their lack of compliance with the law,” LaRose said in a written statement, adding “Access issues were never a problem. Rural Ohioans are not to blame. I won’t sit quietly while any group distorts the truth to cover for their own negligence.”
Restaurant and bar owners in Ohio opposed the measure, saying most servers would end up making less money than under the current system.
On Wednesday, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and Ohio Restaurant & Hospitality Alliance issued statements applauding the news that the issue wouldn’t be on the November ballot.
One Fair Wage’s proposal calls for gradually raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and then tie annual increases to inflation. It would also require tipped workers earn the same minimum wage, plus whatever they make in tips.
Ohio voters last approved a constitutional amendment on raising the minimum wage in 2006.
Laura Bischoff is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau,
which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal
and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.