An additional 44,665 signatures were submitted to the Arkansas secretary of state’s office Friday on petitions for a proposal to eventually raise the state’s minimum wage to $11 per hour.
Only a quarter of those added signatures, or about 10,000, need to be certified as valid in order to pass the threshold for the proposed wage hike to be be placed on the Nov. 6 ballot for a popular vote.
David Couch, the Little Rock attorney behind the effort, submitted his initial batch of signatures to the secretary of state’s office earlier this month. The office verified three-quarters of the signatures in that initial batch and Monday gave Couch 30 more days to collect enough signatures to reach the 67,887-signature threshold.
Just a few days later, Friday, Couch showed up with eight additional boxes containing 7,706 pages of signatures. He told reporters his paid canvassers had never stopped collecting signatures from across the state while his first batch was reviewed.
Arkansas’ current minimum wage is $8.50 per hour. Under Couch’s proposal, it would rise to $9.25 in 2019, $10 in 2020 and $11 in 2021.
Read Saturday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.