Businesses and restaurant trade groups said Monday that they have submitted enough voter signatures for a ballot measure to overturn a landmark California law that could open the door to workers’ wages being raised to $22 an hour — signatures that labor advocates allege were obtained fraudulently.
The fast-food industry coalition, called Save Local Restaurants, had until Dec. 5 to submit roughly 623,000 California voter signatures to put a measure on the 2024 ballot to ask voters to overturn the law, known as AB 257 or the Fast Recovery Act. The coalition, which has been spending heavily on the referendum, said Monday that it had submitted more than 1 million signatures.
“The FAST Act would have an enormous impact on Californians, and clearly voters want a say in whether it should stand,” the coalition said in a written statement.
It probably will take weeks for California’s secretary of state to review and validate signatures submitted and determine whether the referendum can move forward.
The Dec. 5 deadline is the last day for proponents to turn in signatures to local counties where they were collected. The counties then have eight business days to provide a raw count of signatures to the secretary of state’s office.
If that raw total reaches 100% of required signatures, counties will have 30 business days to do a random sample verification of signatures, said Joe Kocurek, a spokesperson with the secretary of state’s office.
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