Voters will not get the chance to increase Ohio’s minimum wage in this year’s election. Supporters of an effort to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour have come up short in their attempt to get the proposed amendment on the ballot. Joining us to discuss the campaign is the president of One Fair Wage, Saru Jayaraman.
They needed approximately 414,000 signatures to qualify by this month’s deadline. The group Raise the Wage Ohio says it collected about 600,000 signatures. However, because many signatures are disqualified, groups usually have to collect double the required amount, so they fell short.
State law requires ballot efforts to collect the signatures of 5% of registered voters in at least half of Ohio’s 88 counties. The group says it did not meet that threshold.
As a result, leaders have given up on the plan to get on this November’s ballot and will try to get on next year’s ballot instead.
Snollygoster of the week
Senator Sherrod Brown, the Democrat in a tough re-election race in a Trump-leaning state, did not want to talk about Joe Biden before last month’s debate disaster, and he certainly does not want to talk about him now. When he has briefly surfaced in public, he’s been asked if the president should pull out of the race. He only says that he’s listening to Ohio’s legitimate concerns about the issue.
At the very least, he admits there are legitimate concerns, but he is not taking a firm stand—at least not now.
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