2026 has proven to be a busy year for Voters Not Politicians and ballot proposals!
Since August of last year, our staff and volunteers have been fighting tirelessly to push the Mop Up Michigan campaign to meet the signature collection deadline this May. And simultaneously, we have continued to lead the ongoing battle against documentary proof of citizenship policies at the state and federal level.
In the final five months of the Mop Up Michigan campaign, Voters Not Politicians volunteers kept the Mop Up Michigan campaign alive. Volunteer signatures remained the strongest source of valid signatures throughout the campaign, especially from VNP volunteers who consistently maintained over an 85% validity rate. At times throughout the nine month campaign, VNP volunteers accounted for more than half of total signatures from the coalition.
For the first time, VNP volunteers also helped directly in the review and processing of returned petitions to prepare them for submission. Our team worked alongside scores of MMOP coalition partner staff around the clock to make sure every valid signature was counted so that voters get a chance to vote for MMOP this November. Together, we scanned, cured, struck, sorted, and counted hundreds of thousands of petition sheets in time for turn-in.
Our efforts paid off. On May 27, the Mop Up Michigan coalition did what the political establishment said we couldn’t do: we turned in over 560,000 signatures to the Department of Elections, more than enough to qualify this initiative for the ballot this November. The MMOP Coalition is now awaiting the next steps to take place, which will include the Department of Elections reviewing a sample of the signatures we submitted for review, and fighting off the legal challenges from our opposition. Our opposition may outspend us by as much as 10:1, and we know they’ve got every lawyer they can hire working to keep us off the ballot. If that fails and we qualify for the ballot, we know they’ll pull out all the stops to convince voters to vote no in November.
The good news is MMOP is still polling at over 80% with Michiganders. The daily drumbeat of political grift and corruption in our headlines validates VNP’s strategic calculation that fighting political corruption is the most effective way to fight authoritarian attacks on democracy.
At the same time, Voters Not Politicians volunteers are also on the ground leading the resistance to Michigan’s biggest documentary proof of citizenship (DPOC) threat, the so-called “Americans for Citizen Voting” (ACV) proposal, backed by over $3,000,000 of billionaire funding.
Before ACV ever hit the field, VNP spoke with thousands of voters, warning them of the threat to voting access that this petition poses. We also set up a robust reporting system that facilitated rapid response circulator disruption whenever and wherever circulators were spotted in the field. Our efforts made their petition particularly difficult to circulate in Michigan, resulting in it taking longer than expected for the campaign to actually submit their signatures. Furthermore, VNP volunteers had thousands of conversations with voters during this time–educating them about what this initiative actually does and kick-starting the public education work ahead of us: we must make sure Michigan voters aren’t fooled by this push to stop people from voting!
Together with coalition partners, we maximized the reach of our message by pushing local boards and commissions to take up resolutions against this initiative. We are speaking with dozens of municipalities of varying political affiliations, and getting resolutions of opposition to ACV on their agendas. This gives us a chance to educate local elected officials and push our message in the media, drawing even more public opposition to them. The result: local city, township, and county legislatures in over a dozen communities have already passed resolutions!
While ACV did submit their signatures to the Department of Elections, Voters Not Politicians was quick to call out the catastrophic consequences this proposal could have on Michigan voters. And we will continue to speak as strongly as necessary to raise awareness of the ACV threat.
As we await a final decision by the Board of State Canvassers on whether this anti-voting proposal will be on the November ballot, Voters Not Politicians will continue educating voters about the threats of DPOC and other attacks on Michiganders’ voting rights. Our opposition’s dogged determination to suppress the vote, despite the overwhelming support of Michiganders’ for expanded voting rights, means our work won’t be done any time soon.
In the coming months, VNP staff and volunteers will be talking with voters and encouraging them to sign “Vote No” pledge cards, lobbying their local municipalities to pass anti-DPOC resolutions, using relational organizing to share information with their personal networks, and giving presentations to community groups about this issue. You can learn more about our ongoing campaign to preserve voting rights at VNP.vote/dpoc.
Looking ahead, Voters Not Politicians remains unflinchingly committed to fighting against corruption and protecting Michigan voters and the integrity of our elections. With the Mop Up Michigan initiative successfully on track, our focus intensifies on defeating the restrictive DPOC proposal and ensuring every citizen’s right to vote is upheld.