The Headlines
Today was a busy day for the Board of State Canvassers (BOSC), and we now know that there will be at least 3 more ballot petitions out collecting signatures this summer.
During today’s marathon BOSC meeting, both Voters To Stop Pay Cuts and Rank MI Vote received petition summary and petition form approval. Invest in MI Kids received approval for a petition summary but did not receive approval for their form due to the meeting being adjourned after running an hour over the scheduled end time.
The Details
- The Americans for Citizen Voting petition, which last month received approval of the petition summary but due to a typo was asked to re-submit their petition form, did not appear during today’s meeting. The group re-submitted their petition on June 13, and will now go before a special meeting of the BOSC sometime before July 13.
- We fully anticipate both the summary and form of the petition to be approved at this time, and for the group to begin collecting signatures very soon thereafter.
- In related news, we have seen evidence of the Committee to Protect Voters’ Rights petition supporters preparing to enter the field for circulation, including a job posting offering up to $40 per hour for paid circulation.
- The Invest in MI Kids initiative would add a 5% tax on some of the wealthiest Michigan taxpayers, and apply the funds to the state’s K-12 education budget.
- The additional tax would apply to income of more than $500,000 annually for individual filers and more than $1 million annually for joint filers, which would affect less than 60,000 of the state’s almost 5 million taxpayers.
- Organizers say the tax could generate up to $1 billion per year to be used to “support classrooms in local school districts.” This includes funding for career and technical education, attracting and retaining high-quality educators, and reducing class sizes, according to the petition summary.
- The coalition behind this initiative includes VNP partners Rising Voices, Urban Core Collective, and Oakland Forward, as well as the AFT Michigan teacher union, 482 Forward, Michigan Education Justice Coalition, Student Advocacy Center of Michigan, and Up North Advocacy.
- Being the last item on the day’s agenda, after the Board voted 3-1 to approve a petition summary, the meeting was adjourned before the Board voted on approval of the petition form. The Chair indicated that a vote on approval of the petition form would happen at the Board’s next meeting in mid-July.
- The Voters To Stop Pay Cuts petition is a referendum to repeal Public Act 1 of 2025, a law passed earlier this year that undid the changes to minimum and tipped wages which were originally adopted after a successful petition gathering effort in 2018 by the group One Fair Wage.
- You may recall back in 2018, after One Fair Wage successfully gathered the signatures to put their minimum wage law on the ballot, the Republican-controlled legislature used the anti-democratic legislative scheme known as “adopt-and-amend” to adopt and immediately gut the bill, thereby keeping it off the ballot and circumventing Michigan voters’ right to directly decide important issues in their democracy.
- After a lengthy legal battle, the Michigan Supreme Court officially declared the “adopt-and-amend” procedure to be unconstitutional, and ordered that the original law be upheld, as it was written and was supported by the Michigan voters who signed the 2018 petition. The court put this order on a delay to give businesses time to prepare for the change.
- That delay also gave time for the legislature to pass new laws to once again change the minimum and tipped wage law. The bipartisan bills passed by the legislature in February of this year raised the minimum wage and reinstated the lower tipped wage at a higher rate than what was passed through “adopt-and-amend” in 2018.
- If organizers are successful in gathering the required number of valid signatures, PA 1 (2025) would be paused and the original 2018 petition language would be in effect until voters have the opportunity to decide whether or not to repeal PA 1 on the November 2026 ballot.
- The Rank MI Vote proposal would amend the state constitution to require the use of ranked choice voting for federal offices and top state positions, including governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and secretary of state.
- The Rank MI Vote petition would establish a minimum top 5 ranking procedure for the stipulated offices and would take effect beginning in 2029.
- The proposal would move August primaries up to June in even year elections. It would also allow local jurisdictions to adopt RCV as well, although it would not be a requirement. This could potentially result in voters with even year municipal elections having different electoral systems for different offices on the same ballot.
- As ranked choice voting has been adopted in various localities and at different levels of government in the US, multiple studies in recent years have shown that the impacts of the policy often do not reflect the benefits and goals that RCV supporters claim it can achieve.
- Together with the previously approved AxMITax and Committee to Protect Voters’ Rights petitions, this brings the total number of petitions which have been approved for circulation this cycle up to four, with two more (Invest in MI Kids and Americans for Citizen Voting) poised for final approval.
What’s Next
Despite today’s packed agenda, we are certain there are still more petitions that will be coming before the Board of State Canvassers in the coming weeks.
Keeping our supporters and volunteers abreast of all of the different petitions and how these efforts might impact our pro-democracy movement will be key to our continued mission of protecting and strengthening Michigan’s democracy.