LANSING, Mich. — The Michigan Board of State Canvassers is contemplating changes to the state's rules regarding the review of voter signatures for changing state laws, amending the constitution or a candidate seeking to get on the ballot after a year of record demands on the Bureau of Elections.
The changes proposed by state elections director Jonathan Brater seek to speed up the time-intensive process of reviewing hundreds of thousands of signatures for validity and sufficiency in order to allow more time for consideration by the board, challenges to state determinations and potential litigation related to the acceptance or rejection of a petition.
"That process right now is extremely compressed and nobody’s happy with it," Brater said. He added that the current signature-sampling process the board uses was largely developed in the 1970s and '80s and utilizes a computer software that will not longer be functional for producing a random sample of signatures.
