Seventy-two hours before election day, Anne Ballew and her husband Tom Porter spent their Saturday afternoon darting up and down stoops to knock on doors in Dearborn, just outside Detroit. But Ballew and Porter weren’t there to talk about Michigan’s races for governor, US House, attorney general or secretary of state.
They were there to pitch voters on an under-the-radar measure in Michigan that could dramatically protect democracy in the state and offer a roadmap of how to do it elsewhere.
Proposal 2 would amend the state constitution to add a fundamental right to vote, require at least nine days of early voting, allow voters to get on a list to automatically receive a mail-in ballot, sign an affidavit if they lack photo ID, allow for the use of drop boxes, and allow only election officials to conduct post-election audits. Perhaps most significantly, it would require the bipartisan boards responsible for certifying elections in Michigan to do so based only on the official tally of votes. It’s a provision designed to prevent in the future anyone from trying to overturn the vote – something that nearly happened in Michigan in 2020.
The effort marks the first time that a pro-democracy group has used a ballot measure explicitly designed to block partisan actors from overturning elections. It also signals an aggressive approach to using the ballot initiative process to protect voting access as GOP-controlled legislatures have passed laws curtailing voting access. Since the beginning of 2021, lawmakers in 21 states have passed 42 laws limiting voting access, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
“What we are doing as voters is enshrining protections in the constitution that already exist in state law,” said Nancy Wang, the executive director of Voters Not Politicians, a voting group leading a coalition in support of the amendment, before she set out knocking on doors in Dearborn on Saturday. “We’re protecting those rights for ourselves and our state constitution. And insulating them from political interference.”
It could have profound consequences in Michigan, a key battleground state in the US presidential election. In 2020, Donald Trump sought to overturn the results of the election in the state, which he lost to Joe Biden by more than 154,000 votes. Republicans on the board of canvassers in Wayne county, the most populous in the state, nearly refused to certify its election results. The state board of canvassers almost did the same thing, but ultimately certified the election when one of the GOP members voted to do so. He has since been replaced on the board.
“This provision specifically says ‘canvassing boards you have a legal duty to certify the results based on the votes cast by the voters.’ There’s no discretion whatsoever,” she said. “There’s nothing our politicians in the future can do to try to exploit canvassing boards to rig elections.”
Eighteen states allow citizens to initiate a constitutional amendment – presidential battlegrounds Michigan, Arizona, Florida, Ohio and Nevada are among them. While there has been some progress on using the process to expand voting rights, ballot initiatives are extremely expensive and require intensive resources to first gather signatures and then get voters to approve the measure.
Republican-aligned groups in the state have opposed Proposal 2, arguing that it would essentially get rid of Michigan’s photo ID requirement. But Michigan already allows voters to cast a ballot if they lack voter ID, requiring them to sign an affidavit – and Proposal 2 would simply enshrine that protection in the state constitution.
If passed, Proposal 2 would also blunt a separate Republican-aligned ballot initiative that would allow the legislature to pass a veto-proof bill to tighten voter ID requirements and ban outside funding requirements. Organizers missed the deadline for turning in signatures to appeal on the ballot this year, so the measure wouldn’t appear until 2024. “If this initiative succeeds, it will undo anything we ever hoped to accomplish with the Secure MI Vote initiative. We repeat: if Proposal 2 wins in November elections will not be secure ever again,” Secure MI vote, the group behind that measure, said on its website.
There has been limited polling on the measure, but one recent survey found 67% of voters backed Proposal 2. The coalition behind the amendment, Promote the Vote, has also far outraised opponents, taking in $12m between July and October, including $500,000 from the American Civil Liberties Union, according to Mlive.com. Secure MI vote raised $2.2m during the same period, $1.5m coming from Richard Uihlein, a major GOP megadonor.
The push comes on the eve of an election where there are significant concerns in Michigan about voter intimidation and future efforts to overturn elections. Republicans have undertaken a huge effort to recruit people who doubt the 2020 election to serve as poll workers. Republicans who voted to certify Biden’s 2020 win on several local canvassing boards have been replaced. And the Republican nominees for attorney general and secretary of state have openly questioned the 2020 results.
The campaign marks the latest phase of a growing powerful grassroots movement in Michigan to use ballot initiatives to protect voting rights. In 2018, Voters not Politicians, led by a Michigan woman with no prior political experience, successfully pushed a ballot measure that stripped lawmakers of their ability to draw electoral districts, replacing them with an independent panel as part of an effort to rein in severe partisan gerrymandering. That same year, voters passed a separate amendment that expanded access to the ballot, including allowing for no-excuse mail-in voting and automatic voter registration.
“I think any time the people have an opportunity to weigh in on voting issues and voting policy, we get much closer to having a democracy that reflects the will of the people. And I think that’s what this proposal helps us do. Just as the proposal in 2018 helped us do,” said Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s secretary of state, in an interview on Saturday.
As it pushed for the 2018 amendment, Voters Not Politicians built an army of volunteers eager to engage on pro-democracy issues. As of early November, the group had 315 active volunteer canvassers and had knocked on 81,000 doors, it said.
Eight members of that force gathered on Saturday in the living room of Dearborn residents Lawrence Biggs, 73, and Gerilyn Biggs, 69, both retired school social workers, who have been extremely active volunteers in the group. Armed with leftover Halloween candy, trail mix, T-shirts, and water, the group swapped strategies about the best approaches for talking to voters.
“2016, we knocked doors, we thought it was gonna go a different way. And when it didn’t, we really got full steam engaged in any organization we could that was gonna be pro-voter, pro-human, pro-democracy, and against Trump and those forces of evil as we saw them,” Gerilyn said.
“You’re talking about people that are willing to deny elections up and down the slate,” Lawrence added. “The risk is great. I never thought in my lifetime that I’d see this happen in the United States. But it is.”
Ballew, a 67-year-old retired school librarian, first got involved with Voters Not Politicians during the 2018 anti-gerrymandering campaign, and started pushing for Proposal 2 after watching Republicans nearly overturn the election in her state in 2020. She was also at the central ballot counting center in Detroit on election night in 2020 as it turned into chaos. She’s worried that could happen again.
“I was pretty concerned when I saw the board of canvassers in Wayne county was waffling on certifying the vote. And that was sort of a nail-biter,” she said while walking between houses in Dearborn. “Nobody’s ever suggested that I talk to the people that I’m canvassing about that, but I tend to. I’ll say that it requires that the local board of canvassers certify only based on the count of the vote. It’s not on any partisan concerns. And some people are nodding and with me.”
Tom, her husband, said: “We have a lot of concerns about the direction things seem to be moving in terms of getting away from facts and evidence and moving into conspiracy theories instead of real information.”
Talking with a voter in Dearborn on Saturday, Ballew emphasized that the amendment would allow for several days of guaranteed in-person voting, allow Michiganders to request to be on a list to automatically receive a mail-in ballot and provide for a tracking system for mail-in ballots. “So the purpose of Proposal 2 is to make sure that as many voters as possible show up?” the voter asked.
“Yes, to open the door wide because the system is secure,” Ballew responded. “There’s really very little voter fraud. We’re trying to encourage people to vote. And we’re trying to make sure that everything is there and available to everyone.”
The voter told her she would support the amendment.
