The Numbers Look Bad for the Group Trying to Undo the $15 Minimum Wage

King County Elections is currently tallying up voter signatures on the referendum campaigns aimed at undoing the city’s $15 minimum wage law by putting it on this November’s ballot. To be fair, the people behind the more organized referendum, a group called Forward Seattle, like to say they’re not against the wage raise, they just want voters to have a choice—but it’s abundantly clear what choice they want voters to make, and that choice is to undo the $15 minimum wage. (Forward Seattle previously put forward a smaller, slower minimum-wage proposal that would get to $12.50 in 2020, but they couldn’t run a charter amendment this year, so they’ve turned to a referendum on the current law.)

The Seattle City Clerk’s Office turned over 18,920 signatures to King County for verification, and as of the end of today, King County Elections had reviewed 8,389 of them, and verified 6,409 of those (meaning they weed out any duplicates, fakes, or people who aren’t registered voters and verify the valid voter signatures). That puts the verification rate so far at about 76 percent. Forward Seattle needs an overall verification rate of about 87 percent to get their referendum on the ballot, so cautious optimism is beginning to emanate from the pro-$15 camps in this city. Given, as Goldy pointed out this weekend, that this referendum campaign was rushed, and may not have had the highest standards, it could be hard to make up this ground. But it’s not impossible.

Meanwhile, the city clerk’s office reports that they received 281 signature withdrawal requests last week for minimum-wage referendums, from voters who signed a petition and then wanted to take their signature back.

It’s still not outside the realm of possibility that the referendum could make it to the ballot. But if you’re keeping track, today things are looking good for $15.