LANSING, Mich. — A proposal to enshrine abortion rights in the Michigan Constitution gathered enough valid signatures to make the November ballot, according to state Bureau of Elections reports published Thursday.
The bureau also recommended Promote the Vote 2022, a voting rights initiative, be certified, making it likely three proposals will appear on the Nov. 8 ballot. The Board of State Canvassers last week approved language for a term limits initiative.
The state Bureau of Elections' Thursday recommendation that the bipartisan board certify the Reproductive Freedom for All and Promote the Vote 2022 ballot initiatives at next Wednesday's meeting is likely to spark a high-profile ballot box fight this fall over abortion and voting rights in Michigan.
The bureau declined to weigh in on two challenges to the initiatives focused on text formatting and required notice of how one initiative would change state law. It's likely one or both of those challenges could end up in court in the next month.
Reproductive Freedom for All turned in 752,288 signatures in July, a record number that exceeded the state-mandated signature tally of 425,059. After examining petition sheets and a random sample of 513 signatures, state officials found the campaign had submitted an estimated 596,379 valid signatures, more than the minimum threshold for certification by the Board of State Canvassers.
Reproductive Freedom for All launched its campaign to amend the Michigan Constitution to "explicitly affirm" reproductive rights, including abortion, in January.
The effort gained energy from supporters and national attention after the U.S. Supreme Court in June struck down the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which had provided access to abortion nationally for the past half-century.
Michigan has a law on the books that dates back to the 1840s and bars any attempt to "procure the miscarriage" of a woman, unless "necessary to preserve" her life. Enforcement of that law is currently on hold as a court battle plays out.
A group that opposes the abortion rights ballot proposal, Citizens to Support MI Women and Children, has challenged the proposal's petitions, saying spacing issues had caused words to be joined together in error.
Most of the mistakes identified by Citizens to Support MI Women and Children appeared to be a lack of spaces between words in the main language of the petition that the group says has resulted "in a string of gibberish."
Reproductive Freedom for All provided an affidavit from the printer of the petition, stating that spaces were included in the full text of the proposed constitutional amendment, according to Thursday's report from the Bureau of Elections.
The bureau made no recommendation on the merits of legal arguments about the petition's word spacing.
"The Michigan election law is silent on the amount of space that must be between letters and words in a petition," the bureau said in its report.
Citizens to Support MI Women and Children said it expected the board would recommend certification based on the signatures gathered, but said it would continue its fight on the spacing issue.
"Now we look forward to the Board of Canvassers meeting on August 31st to present our case as to why strings of gibberish shouldn't be added to our state constitution forever," said Christen Pollo, a spokeswoman for the group. "It would be unprecedented for something with this many mistakes to be put on the ballot. The correct number of mistakes to put in our constitution is zero — not 60."
The bureau also recommended the certification of Promote the Vote 2022, a petition initiative that would change Michigan's voting rules to allow for nine days of early, in-person voting, ensure ballot drop boxes in each community and require the state to pay for absentee ballot postage.
Last month, Promote the Vote submitted 664,029 signatures to the Bureau of Elections, well above the required benchmark of 425,059 valid signatures.
After a review of a sampling of signatures and the petition sheets, the bureau found the proposal had 507,780 valid signatures, 62,760 more valid signatures than it needs to make the November ballot.
Opposition group Defend Your Vote had challenged the ballot initiative on allegations that the proposal makes changes to the state constitution that weren't listed on the petition, as required by law.
Promote the Vote argued its language does not make the sections referenced by Defend Your Vote "wholly inoperative" so they did not need to be listed with the petition.
Bureau of Elections staff declined to weigh in on the merits of the legal argument, noting the challenge "raises legal arguments pertaining to the meaning of the Michigan Constitution as interpreted by the Michigan Supreme Court."
Promote the Vote 2022, which expands on a 2018 ballot initiative focused on voting, also allows election officials to accept third-party donations, lets voters join a permanent absentee ballot list and ensures military or overseas ballots postmarked before Election Day and received within six days after are still counted.
It also would require audits to be conducted publicly by state and county officials without involvement by party officials. It would cement the role of canvassers in certifying election results as well enshrine in the constitution Michigan's current voter identification rules, which allow in-person voters to show a photo ID or fill out an affidavit to attest to their identity.
