This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.
The Michigan Board of State Canvassers has denied ballot access to a state constitutional amendment that would require Michigan voters to prove they are U.S. citizens.
A long, tense meeting on Monday ended in a deadlock, meaning the effort won’t make the ballot without intervention from the Michigan Supreme Court. The decision — or lack thereof — means that despite the massive numbers of signatures the amendment’s supporters turned in, it will likely be the court that decides whether it makes the November ballot.
In March, the group Americans for Citizen Voting submitted 709,841 signatures to the state in support of the amendment — significantly more than the 446,198 valid signatures required to get on the ballot. To estimate whether the group surpassed that threshold, the Board of State Canvassers checked the validity of a random sample of 1,000 of the submitted signatures.
At least 629 of them needed to be valid to certify the proposal for the ballot. The board found 626 were valid, though it had not ruled one way or the other on a decisive number of the signatures by the end of the meeting.
Mary Ellen Gurewitz, a Democrat and the vice chair of the board, called the petition drive “sloppy,” saying that it put the board in a “bad position.” Paul Cordes, a Republican on the board, said he felt that if all signatures were considered, there would be more than enough to certify the effort for the ballot.
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The bipartisan Board of State Canvassers isn’t allowed to approve or reject certification based on whether board members like the subject matter of the petition. Instead, they have an obligation to act only based on whether the number of signatures is valid.
It wasn’t entirely clear what the board would do after the Bureau of Elections released a report last week recommending denial. The board makes its decision independently of the bureau, but the two work in tandem on ballot measures, election results, and more.
In its analysis of the 1,000 signatures, the Bureau said that the effort had only 612 valid signatures. After a weekend of back-and-forths between Americans for Citizen Voting and Promote The Vote Action — a voting rights group that challenged some of the signatures — the number was 624. Much of Monday’s meeting was spent going through individual petition sheets to see if others should be added.
That effort ended when the board ran out of time and took a 2-2 vote along party lines both to certify the effort and to find it insufficient, falling short of the decisive majority needed to certify and put the amendment on the ballot.
Amendment’s rejection to be appealed
Americans for Citizen Voting doesn’t plan to let the canvassers’ decision go unchallenged, particularly given the narrow margin between certification and rejection.
Paul Jacob, president of Liberty Initiative Fund, the group behind Americans for Citizen Voting, called the meeting’s outcome a “travesty” based on partisan politics rather than the will of Michigan voters.
“People deserve a vote on this issue, and they’re going to get one,” Jacob said after the decision. “We’re going to go to every court we’ve got to go to. We’ll go to the Supreme Court of Michigan. We’ll go to the U.S. Supreme Court, wherever we have to go.”
According to Michigan law, organizers have seven business days — in other words, until Sept. 2 — to file their appeal, which will go straight to the Michigan Supreme Court.
The group spent more than a year building support for its effort, and in March it claimed to have submitted more than 750,000 signatures to the state. State Sen. Ruth Johnson, a former Republican secretary of state and a supporter of the amendment, said at the time that that number spoke to the popularity of the effort. Jacob reiterated that Monday, saying it was a sign that Michigan supported proof of citizenship.”
“You can’t cheat the people of Michigan and get away with it,” Jacob, who lives in Virginia, told reporters. “We’re going to be back.”
The Supreme Court will be up against a tight deadline: The earliest ballots go out to military and overseas voters by Sept. 19, and all absentees must be available for distribution no later than Sept. 24. That means the contents of the ballots need to be finalized ASAP to ensure clerks have time to print them.
What’s in the Americans for Citizenship Voting proposal?
If the proposed amendment does ultimately make the ballot, Michiganders would be weighing in on one of the strictest proof-of-citizenship requirements in the U.S.
New voters would have to prove their citizenship when registering, a requirement currently in place in four states. But the amendment would also require existing voters to prove their citizenship if the state can’t independently verify it. The ultimate result would be an Arizona-style system in which Michigan is required to maintain two voter rolls — one for voters who have proven their citizenship and can vote in all elections and a second for those who have not and who can only vote in federal elections.
It would also remove the option for voters without a valid photo ID to instead sign an affidavit verifying their identity under the penalty of perjury. It would instead implement a “hardship program” funded by the state to allow those who aren’t able to afford identification documents to get them for free.
Those who vote without their citizenship verified would have to vote a provisional ballot. They would then have six days after an election to show their documents to election administrators or else their vote will not be counted.
Proof-of-citizenship requirements enjoy broad public support; a YouGov/CBS News poll from earlier this year found that 66% of Americans support requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. Being a U.S. citizen is already a federal requirement to vote in U.S. elections, however, and opponents say putting up additional barriers would just serve to disenfranchise people who are citizens but lack the paper trail to prove it.
Noncitizen voting is extremely rare in Michigan and in the U.S. When it does happen, it is typically prosecuted. Six people have been publicly charged across the state for casting a ballot in the 2024 general election despite not having U.S. citizenship, a tiny fraction of the more than 5.6 million ballots cast in Michigan.
The topic has remained at the forefront of conservative talking points, though. President Donald Trump said without evidence last month that more than 270,000 noncitizens appear on voter rolls across the country. He has made a federal proof-of-citizenship requirement a priority, repeatedly pressuring Republicans in Congress to pass the SAVE America Act. The bill, however, lacks the support in the U.S. Senate to pass.
If the Michigan proposal makes the November ballot, it would need only a majority of the state’s voters to vote yes in order to be enshrined in the state constitution.
Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.