From fostering grassroots leadership in our communities to modernizing how Michiganders access election information and exploring the future of our electoral systems, Voters Ed Fund’s 2026 initiatives are making significant strides in strengthening our democracy.
Here is a look at how Voters Ed Fund volunteers and partners are continuing to innovate in the field of voter participation and civic engagement in Michigan.
Voters Ed Fund’s flagship program My City Votes is working hand-in-hand with local clerks, mayors, and other trusted community leaders and organizations to make sure that voters, especially those in historically underrepresented communities, know their voting options and have confidence in local and state election systems. In 2026, our My City Votes communities include Benton Harbor, Buena Vista Charter Township, Flint, Grand Rapids, Muskegon Heights, Oak Park, Pontiac, Saginaw, Warren, and Ypsilanti.
For 2026, My City Votes began a new volunteer committee structure, with each committee focusing on different facets of voter, partner, and municipal leader engagement. Neighborhood Action Council volunteers are trained to be leaders in their community who work with staff, partners, and key stakeholders to help make strategic program and field decisions with staff for their city. Volunteer Liaisons focus on clerk and partner engagement, ensuring our voter contact program has as big of an impact as possible. These volunteers gather insight to help support civic engagement programming for that city including educational workshops, early vote parties, and candidate forums. Voter Contact Volunteers will handle various types of direct voter engagement including attending deep canvassing, election protection efforts such as poll challenging, research and data analysis, presenting educational information, and hosting local events like nonpartisan candidate forums and early vote parties.
By giving local volunteers greater stake in the My City Votes program, Voters Ed Fund is helping train and develop new grassroots activists across Michigan communities, and connect these activists with local elected leaders to form lasting partnerships that will support voters and encourage civic engagement long-term. If you would like to join these volunteer teams, please sign up here.
Already this year, My City Votes has reconnected with local clerks, identified new local community organization partners, and engaged in several community events.
Throughout the spring, My City Votes collaborated with community partners including Journey Faith Group in Southeast Michigan, Survivors Speak in Washtenaw County, and the Muskegon Heights Delta Sigma Theta Alumnae Chapter to facilitate civic engagement events to the public, ensuring voters were aware of their voting options ahead of the primary and general elections
In May, My City Votes provided the Saginaw Alpha Kappa Alpha Eta Upsilon Omega Chapter a $2,500 mini grant to host an Election Day Party for the Michigan State Senate Special Election. This party was held at the Saginaw YMCA, as this polling location covers two of Saginaw’s historically lower turnout precincts. Through the grant, the sorority promoted the event via radio advertisement, social media and flyer circulation. The event garnered over 100 adult voters. To strengthen local democracy, funds were also used to provide training to increase voter mobilization, education and advocacy.
As we move towards the August and November elections, My City Votes will be ramping up events as well as direct voter contacts through mail, digital ads, and official websites created in partnership with local clerks.
For voters outside My City Votes cities, Voters Ed Fund is bringing back MichiganEarlyVote.com (previously MIDropbox.com) to provide Michigan voters an accurate tool to find their closest absentee voter dropbox and early voting site for their city or township. All information on the site will be verified by city, township, and county clerks all across Michigan.
This year, MichiganEarlyVote.com is being brought completely in-house, and we’ve already started recruiting volunteers to do the labor-intensive work of contacting clerks to verify the times and locations for both dropboxes and early voting sites. Over the duration of this project we are aiming to have lead volunteers in all 83 Counties and a total of 200 research volunteers. Michigan has more than 1,500 municipal clerks, so we are always looking for more people to help us with this project. Sign up here to volunteer to make phone calls to clerks.
Over the course of the 2026 election, we expect to have over 250,000 voters to utilize this free election tool, making it indispensable for Michigan voters.
The Michigan proportional representation steering committee, led by Voters Not Politicians, and working in close collaboration with steering committee partners Promote The Vote, Michigan AFL-CIO, and Activate Detroit, has steadily progressed their work this year.
From January to June the coalition held four coalition policy convenings. Attendees included representatives from: ACCESS, APIA Vote, All Voting is Local, Bellissima Sanctuary, Black Voters Matter, Detroit Disability Power, Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation, LGBT Detroit, LWV MI, MI Country, MI Poder, Michigan Voices, Mothering Justice, NAACP, PROACTIVE, Rank MI Vote, Rising Voices, S&D PJ Housing, VAAC, and When You Vote, I Win. At the convenings, we presented on the problems with our current electoral system and introduced proportional representation and three of the most common systems (open list, closed list, and mixed member systems). We also did several voting simulations that compared the results in a winner-take-all system, open list, closed list, and mixed member, and heard from several policy experts in the field of proportional representation and comparative politics, including lawyer and law professor Spencer Overton.
Voters Ed Fund staff has also hosted a series of virtual town hall presentations, which provided valuable feedback from trusted Voters Not Politicians volunteers on how best to present this new reform to the public.
The Represent Michigan (Represent MI) steering committee has also added more right-of-center members to help the coalition build our outreach and connections to Michiganders across the political spectrum, combat perceptions of being a Democrat-centered effort, and will ultimately help achieve a solution that benefits, and is accepted by, all Michiganders.
The coalition continues to move toward more public outreach and supporter recruitment as we head into the summer. You can follow the progress of Represent MI on our new social media channels, including Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube!
As we look toward the fall elections, the work of the Voters Ed Fund remains more vital than ever. Whether through the grassroots power of My City Votes, the essential access provided by MichiganEarlyVote.com, or the collaborative pursuit of fair representation through the Represent MI coalition, we are actively building a more inclusive and effective democracy for all Michiganders.