Ohioans strongly repudiate predatory payday lending by voting yes on issue 5!
Ohio's consumers won an overwhelming victory on Tuesday when Issue 5 passed by a significant margin. Over 3 million Ohioans voted YES on Issue 5 to lower interest rates on payday loans from 391% APR to 28% APR. Issue 5 won in 87 out of 88 counties, Adams County in Southeast Ohio being the only county to vote ‘no' on Issue 5 by approximately 339 votes.
Ohioans unquestionably saw through the lies and deceptive advertisement of the payday lenders and their nearly $20 million campaign. Voters strongly repudiated over 10 years of predatory payday lending and asked for a return to fair and reasonable small loan lending.
You can see the Issue 5 election results on the Ohio Secretary of State's website here: http://vote.sos.state.oh.us/pls/enrpublic/f?p=130:9:0
The Cleveland Plain Dealer's editorial board summed up Ohio consumers' victory in this fashion: "Payday lenders lose big in Ohio - and deservedly so."
"It didn't matter how many millions of dollars payday lenders spent in their desperate attempt to continue charging 391 percent interest rates on short-term loans, Ohioans weren't about to be fooled by their deceitful campaign."
"Voters Tuesday dealt the payday-lending industry one of the most humiliating election defeats imaginable, overwhelmingly approving a measure (Issue 5) capping APR interest rates at 28 percent."
"The lenders made a pathetic attempt to convince voters that opposing Issue 5 would save jobs. But Issue 5 was never about jobs. It was always about fairness, about preventing the payday lenders from preying on Ohio's most vulnerable citizens. Ohioans understood that. The payday lenders and their high-priced consultants didn't."
You can read the Cleveland Plain Dealer editorial here:
http://blog.cleveland.com/pdopinion/2008/11/payday_lenders_lose_big_in_ohi.html
The passage of Issue 5 means the end of more than a decade of predatory lending, the end of hundreds of thousands of Ohioans falling into the debt trap and the start of a new era of fair and reasonable small loan lending that seeks to build wealth for Ohio consumers!
Thank you to Ohio voters, Issue 5 supporters and Issue 5 coalition members! This victory belongs to all of you!
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