While organizers say the petition is not a Republican response, called Secure MI Vote, the new ballot measure preserves several measures targeted by its counterpart.
Promoting Vote 2022 would:
- Continue to allow people to sign an affidavit attesting to their identity to vote, rather than showing official ID. Secure MI Vote would require IDs.
- Require the Michigan Legislature to fund mail-in ballot postage as well as a tracking system that lets voters know the location of their mail-in ballot and if there are any issues.
- Enable local governments to accept funding from public and charitable sources. This would be prohibited under Secure MI Vote.
- Require ballot boxes for 15,000 voters in a municipality.
- Establish that post-election audits can only be conducted by state and county election officials. The amendment would prohibit officials of any political party from participating in the audit. A separate ballot measure Audit MI would appoint a political council to carry out audits.
- Allow voters to register to vote by mail for all future elections, without having to reapply. Secure MI Vote would require voters to reapply to vote by mail each election.
The proposal joins 10 petitions seeking to be placed in the November 2022 ballot involving topics ranging from abortion rights and criminal justice reform to minimum wage and payday loans.
Promote the Vote 2022 is supported by the nonprofit Promote the Vote, the ACLU of Michigan, the League of Women Voters of Michigan, All Voting is Local and Voters Not Politicians.
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He still has a long way to go. The Board of Canvassers must first approve the 100-word petition summary and then must approve the petition form.
Promote the Vote 2022 would then need to garner 425,059 signatures for the petition to be passed by the Michigan Legislature or included in the 2022 ballot.
If voters approve of both dueling ballot measures, organizers of both agree that Promoting the Vote would carry more law because it is a constitutional amendment. Secure MI Vote is not.
Polls indicate that voters support the concept of making elections more accessible and early voting – as well as measures such as requiring ID.
Jamie Roe, spokesperson for Secure MI Vote, told Bridge Michigan that his group wants to “make voting easier and harder to cheat” and predicted the progressive counterpart “insecure Michigan elections.”
“It’s a turnout factor for us,” Roe said. “And if they want to put it on the ballot, have fun.”
The dueling polls come as Democrats and Republicans battle nationwide over election laws, and former President Donald Trump’s loyalists continue to spread false allegations of voter fraud in the presidential election of 2020.
