Michigan activist groups launched a ballot question drive Monday to prevent DTE Energy, Consumers Energy, and other large companies doing business with the state from contributing to political campaigns.
The move follows years of poor reliability from the utilities, while Michigan customers pay the highest electricity prices in the region.
Representatives for the Michiganders for Money Out of Politics campaign argue utilities have dodged accountability by investing in the political system rather than better service.
“Michigan is a cautionary tale, a state where corporate money has brought political silence and inaction,” Ponsella Hardaway, executive director for the nonprofit MOSES — Metropolitan Organizing Strategy Enabling Strength — said on a Monday press call to announce the proposed ballot measure.
If placed in front of Michigan voters and approved, the ballot measure would ban political contributions from regulated monopolies and companies with government contracts over $250,000, or those seeking such contracts.
The group will need to collect 357,000 signatures to get the issue on the 2026 fall ballot and will use volunteers, said Kim Murphy-Kovalick, senior director of policy and programs with Voters Not Politicians. Organizers said there’s strong, bipartisan support for the measure.
After hearing a description of “take back our power” legislation introduced in 2024, 81% of Michigan voters supported it, while just 9% opposed the bills, according to a 2024 poll from Ann Arbor-based Emma White Research LLC. 90% of Democrats, 84% of Independents, and 66% of Republicans supported the proposal.
“There is a vicious appetite in Michigan to get money out of politics,” said Ken Whittaker, executive director at Michigan United and Michigan United Action.
Voters Not Politicians led a successful 2018 effort to transfer oversight of legislative redistricting from lawmakers to an independent commission. Murphy-Kovalick said the group has begun training volunteers to collect signatures and organizers plan to host town hall events to raise awareness.
Voters Not Politicians gathered more signatures for its 2018 effort than what’s needed to put the MMOP Michigan proposal on the ballot, she said.
If the ballot measure passes, it remains to be seen whether DTE and Consumers could contribute to dark money nonprofits, which then donate to to lawmakers.
This story was originally published by Michigan Chronicle. Read more here: https://planetdetroit.org/2025/07/michigan-ballot-dte-donations/