If you vote in person on Tuesday, you may encounter enthusiastic people wearing brightly colored t-shirts and wielding clipboards, pens and hopeful smiles. Do not be alarmed. They will probably just ask you to sign a petition to get a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot in November.

Gathering signatures is the last step in a long process to get an amendment to the Ohio constitution on the ballot. Amendment campaigns need more than 400,000 signatures from registered voters in at least 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties. They typically try to collect many more than that because state officials can reject signatures for a variety of reasons.

These are the amendments you might be asked to help get on the ballot.

Raise the Wage Ohio

Ohio’s minimum wage is currently $10.45 an hour. The proposed constitutional amendment called Raise the Wage Ohio would boost it to $12.75 on Jan. 1, 2025, and then to $15 on Jan. 1, 2026.

The proposed amendment would also eliminate the subminimum wage for restaurant servers and other tipped workers. The tipped minimum wage is currently $5.25. Employers are required to make up the difference if workers’ wages and tips don’t equal an hourly rate of $10.45.

Replacing the subminimum tipped wage wouldn’t fully become effective until 2029. It would be phased in with a series of incremental raises.

The goal is to bring Ohio’s minimum wage more in line with the living wage. This is what a worker “must earn to support his or herself and their families,” according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator. In Ohio, a single person with no children needs to earn an hourly wage of $15.33. In Cuyahoga County, it is $15.61.

The Raise the Wage Ohio campaign is led by One Fair Wage Ohio, which is part of a national movement, and by; the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, Red Wine and Blue and other groups.

Citizens Not Politicians

The Citizens Not Politicians constitutional amendment is intended to stop gerrymandering by removing politicians and lobbyists from the process of drawing new district boundaries.

Gerrymandering is the practice of drawing political district boundaries in ways that benefit one party over another within a state or in the U.S. House of Representatives. 

In 2015, more than 70% of Ohio voters approved an amendment to the state constitution that changed the way state legislative district boundaries are determined. 

This created the Ohio Redistricting Commission, made up of people appointed by Republican and Democratic leaders in the General Assembly, plus the governor, state auditor and secretary of state.

But not much changed. Republicans currently hold 26 Republicans of 33 seats in the Ohio Senate, and 67 of 99 in the Ohio House of Representatives. Those majorities are large enough to override vetoes by the governor (meaning they can pass a law even if the governor refuses to sign it).

The Citizens Not Politicians amendment would:

• Create the 15-member Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission made up of Democratic, Republican, and independent citizens who broadly represent the different geographic areas and demographics of the state. 

• Ban current or former politicians, political party officials and lobbyists from sitting on the cCommission.

• Require fair and impartial districts by making it unconstitutional to draw voting districts that discriminate against or favor any political party or individual politician.

• Require the commission to operate under an open and independent process. 

Be kind

Amendment campaigns have until July 3 to collect hundreds of thousands of signatures. So if the clipboard folks seem a little frantic, it’s because of that ticking clock.

Petitioning is hard and usually unpaid work. If you can’t or don’t want to sign, just say so; they don’t want to waste your time or theirs. And in either case, consider thanking them for their service to democracy.

Voting reminder

The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections is open this weekend for voters who want to cast their ballot before Tuesday. The last two days of in-person, early voting are Saturday, March 16, from 8 a.m. through 4 p.m. and Sunday, March 17 from 1 p.m. through 5 p.m.

After this weekend, your next chance to head to the voting booth is on Election Day, Tuesday, March 19. Polls in Ohio are open from 6:30 a.m. until 7:30 p.m.