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Michigan lawmakers are considering reforms to how the state handles petitions for ballot initiatives following recommendations from the Board of State Canvassers.
The House Elections Committee met Tuesday to talk through a slate of six bills — House Bills 5571–5576 — which Committee Chair Penelope Tsernoglou (D-East Lansing) said would update and streamline the state’s petitioning process.
The Board of State Canvassers is made up of four members appointed by the governor, two Democrats and two Republicans. It oversees canvassing and certification for statewide elections. It also oversees canvassing for candidate nominating petitions filed with the Secretary of State, state-level ballot proposals, assigns ballot designations and adopts language for statewide ballot proposals, among a number of other duties.
According to Tsernoglou, who also sponsored one of the bills in the package, the Board of State Canvassers previously convened a workgroup of bipartisan election lawyers and experts to examine the current petition process, which resulted in several proposals for updates to state election law.
“The main goal with these bills is to codify current practices of the Board of State Canvassers, while also ensuring that Michigan election law is clear as to the requirements for the petition process. The bills also address ways to ease recent increased burdens on the Bureau of Elections,” Tsernoglou said, noting that as voter turnout increases, the signature requirements for petitions increases, per Michigan’s constitution, while the bureau has the same amount of time to process these signatures.
House Elections Committee Chair Penelope Tsernoglou (D-East Lansing) testifies on a package of bills aimed at updating and streamlining Michigan’s petition process. | Kyle Davidson
Tsernoglou also pointed to an incident in the 2022 election in which more than 70,000 fraudulent signatures were submitted across 10 campaigns resulting in five Republican candidates for governor being disqualified from the ballot.
“Neither the Bureau of Elections nor the Board of State Canvassers had a procedure in place on how to process this unprecedented situation. The procedure utilized by the bureau was ultimately upheld by the Michigan Supreme Court and thus, we would like to codify this process,” Tsernoglou said.
The legislation has also seen some changes since they were first introduced, Tsernoglou said, noting that while the legislation previously proposed extending the filing deadline for ballot petitions and proposed constitutional amendments, the extension had been removed in a bill substitute.
“We are continuing to have conversations as to whether we want to change that timeline. If we do pursue changing it, we would want to increase the number of days that individuals could actually collect those signatures. So we want to make it, you know, fair for groups to be able to get their petitions on the ballot,” Tsernoglou said.
The legislation would make it clear that the Board of State Canvassers is permitted to use its current practice of random sampling to ensure a petition complies with the requirements under Michigan election law, Tsernoglou said.
It also clarifies that the board has the authority to disqualify obviously fraudulent petition signatures and refer them to the Attorney General for investigation, Tsernoglou said.
According to analysis from the nonpartisan House Fiscal Agency, the board would no longer be required to check signatures against the state’s qualified voter file before disqualifying them. It would also nix requirements for the board to forward a petition to a city township or clerk if it is unable to verify a signature on a petition. However, the board could still require local clerks to help determine the validity of signatures by checking them against registration records including the qualified voter file.
Tsernoglou also said the bills would remove “outdated” references to regarding how the Secretary of State must communicate with the Board of State Canvassers and how they must announce that the Board of State Canvassers has declared a petition as sufficient
It also removes requirements for paid signature gatherers to sign a sworn affidavit, and requires the petitioner to state in writing that they are submitting at least the minimum number of required signatures and have made a good-faith effort to sort the petitions based on the number of signatures on each petition sheet, Tsernoglou said.
Erin Schor, director of the office of policy initiatives in the Department of State takes questions from the House Elections Committee. | Kyle Davidson
Melanie Macey, policy counsel for Promote the Vote — which backed successful ballot proposals to expand voting rights in 2018 and 2022 — said the overall theme of the bills is to simplify the current state law around petitions.
“It’s pretty complicated, needlessly complicated, but at the same time, that leaves some holes. It doesn’t address everything that the sponsor of a ballot proposal or initiated law would need to know. So the amendments here proposed both simplify the existing provisions, but also fill in the gaps where information is missing or where the process isn’t clear in the law,” Macey said.
Macey highlighted changes in House Bill 5571 which moves the Board of State Canvassers current strict compliance standard for petition formatting to substantial requirement standard.
“It makes sense to have the form be more streamlined with fewer of those kind of ‘gotcha’ type rules just to ensure that the will of voters isn’t subverted by technicalities,” Macey said. “We support the idea that voters should be presented with clear, easy to read and understand petition forms, and that sponsors of ballot proposals and initiatives shouldn’t be forced to argue endlessly about font size or the minutiae of how things are placed.”
Macey also raised the potential change in timeline for gathering signatures, noting that Michigan’s six-month signature gathering window for ballot initiatives is one of the shortest nationwide.
“It’s known that gathering signatures is easier in the warm weather, so a petitioner shouldn’t be punished because Michigan winters can be long,” Macey said.
After taking questions, the committee adjourned without taking a vote on the bills.
The House Elections Committee on June 4, 2024. | Kyle Davidson
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