Minimum wage hike passes

Millions of low-wage workers across Florida will get raises, as an amendment to boost the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour narrowly passed.

Voters also approved a mostly symbolic measure meant to ensure non-citizens could ever vote in state elections. and modest property tax savings for homeowners and the widows and widowers of some veterans. But they soundly rejected a big business-backed effort to make it harder to amend the constitution in the future and narrowly rejected an attempt to overhaul the state’s elections.

Amendment Two — which would raise the state minimum wage from $7.25 to $10 starting next year and to $15 an hour by 2026 — was at 61.3 percent support with 99 percent of the vote counted, according to the Associated

Press.

Constitutional amendments need 60 percent support to pass.

“A nail-biter,” said Orlando personal injury attorney John Morgan, who helped finance the campaign.

The amendment will mean raises for 2.5 million full- and-part-time workers around the state, according to a recent study by the Florida Policy Institute, a leftleaning think tank. The higher wage would lift an estimated 1.3 million households out of poverty.

The large majority support for the amendment followed a hard-fought campaign that pitted labor unions against some of Florida’s biggest servicesector businesses.

It’s “a huge deal,” said

Alexis Davis, a policy analyst at the Florida Policy Institute. “One in four Florida workers would see their pay bumped.”

The opposition was led by the Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association, a group run in part by lobbyists and executives for tourism businesses like Disney, Universal and Hilton and restaurant companies like Red Lobster, Wendy’s and Outback Steakhouse parent Bloomin’ Brands. Prominent Republican politicians — including Gov. Ron DeSantis — also urged voters to reject the higher minimum wage.

At the same time, voters rejected another amendment that some of the state’s biggest businesses had hoped they would pass: Amendment Four, which would have made it much harder to pass any future constitutional amendment by requiring them to be ap

proved in two statewide vote rather than one.

With 99 percent of the vote in, Amendment Four didn’t even have majority support — let alone the 60 percent threshold for constitutional amendments. It was at just 47.5 percent support.

The amendment made it onto the ballot thanks to $9 million in spending by an organization called “Keep Our Constitution Clean Inc.,” a so-called “dark money” group because it did not have to disclose its donors. But reporting by the Orlando Sentinel found that the group raised significant sums from the cigarette giant Reynolds American Inc. and another group with extensive links to Associated Industries of Florida, a lobbying organization for businesses such as Walt Disney World, U.S. Sugar Corp. and Florida Power & Light.

Businesses have spent

years lobbying to make it harder to amend the state constitution — in hopes of short-circuiting ballot measures like a $15 minimum wage.

Another dark money campaign was far more successful, as Amendment One passed with ease.

It was at 79.3 percent support.

Amendment One will tweak the state constitution to say that “only” citizens can vote. It will have little practical effect because non-citizens are already prohibited from voting by state law, though supporters said it would prevent any future attempt to extend voting rights to noncitizens.

It was sponsored by a group called Citizen Voters Inc., which refused to disclose it donors, though its organizers were prominent supporters of President Trump. Many people

viewed the amendment as attempt to help attract more conservative voters to the polls.

Meanwhile, bipartisan opposition from Florida’s political parties helped doom Amendment Three, which would have replaced the state’s system of closed partisan primaries with elections in which all candidates run in one race with the top two vote-getters advancing to the general.

The measure was at 57 percent support with 99 percent of the vote in — short of the 60 percent needed.

Dubbed the “All Voters Vote” amendment, supporters billed it as a way to break the practice of gerrymandering — where the party in control of the Florida Legislature draws the state’s legislative and congressional districts to favor itself.

But both the state Republican and Democratic parties fought hard against the amendment. And even some non-partisan groups decided to oppose it, amid fears that top-two elections could dilute minority representation in Tallahassee and Washington.

Two relatively non-controversial property tax amendments passed with ease. Amendment Five, which would give homeowners who have accumulated property tax savings under the state’s Save Our Homes tax cap more time to buy a new home without losing those savings, had 74.5 percent of the vote.

And Amendment Six, which would expand a property tax break for veterans by allowing propertytax breaks for their homes to transfer to their spouses if they die, had 89.7 percent of the vote.

Both amendments are expected to have modest impacts.