A second ballot committee seeking to expand voting rights in the state constitution to include early in-person voting and late voting by overseas military also surpassed the state’s previous signature record. On Monday, it gathered and collected 669,972 signatures. The state Office of Elections in the coming weeks will review the validity of Reproductive Freedom for All signatures and promote Vote 2022 signatures to ensure the initiative has the required 425,059 signatures to appear on the November ballot. Based on its findings, the bureau will make a recommendation to the Board of State Supervisors for or against certification for the ballot. The deadline for certification for the November ballot is Sept. 9, but organizers say the Michigan Office of Elections will likely make recommendations sooner and may consider certifications at Board of State Canvassers meetings in August, said Steven Liedel, attorney for the Reproductive Freedom for All initiative. Reproductive Freedom for All saw a surge in volunteers and signatures after the US Supreme Court’s draft opinion was leaked in May that marked the downfall of Roe. The high court’s published opinion was released on June 24, overturning Roe in a 6-3 decision. More than 62,000 people have joined or supported the Reproductive Freedom for All effort since it was announced in January, and more than 30,000 of those people came forward after the May leak, the group said. “The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade will not take away the rights and freedoms of people in Michigan to determine if and when they become parents,” American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan Executive Director Loren Khogali said Monday . “We will not allow forced pregnancy in our state, nor will we stand by as the devastating effects of a post-Roe world disproportionately affect people of color, LGBTQ+ communities, youth, low-income people, and those living in rural areas. This is your body, your ballot, your choice.” Both lobby groups said they used extensive quality checks to ensure signatures submitted to the bureau were valid, noting the devastating consequences of bypassing the review for five of the 10 Republican gubernatorial candidates. “We had a very careful process with our signature collection,” said Khalilah Spencer, president of Promote the Vote. “We made sure to go through every signature. The ones that were problematic we’ve hit. What we’ve delivered we’re very confident are valid signatures.” The Reproductive Freedom for All effort collected at least 911,496 signatures, but ended up eliminating 10,398 sheets, or 150,737 signatures, during quality control review, Liedel said. Among those that disappeared were a scattering of report sheets filled out by circulators accused of forgery in the precinct primaries and others expunged for facial defects. “There’s a fairly exhaustive review process that involved facial examination, manual examination, scanning and other elements to ensure that both the entire report sheets and the signatures on those sheets were as valid as possible given the volume,” Liedel said. . ACLU of Michigan President Nathan Triplett said Saturday that no petition in Michigan’s history has “come close” to the number of signatures gathered for the Reproductive Freedom for All initiative. He said the next closest was the 2012 pro-union Protect Our Jobs initiative, which garnered 670,771 signatures but was defeated at the ballot box. If Reproductive Freedom for All and Advance Vote 2022 make the November ballot, they will join another proposed constitutional amendment that would change state term limits.
Reproductive Freedom for All
The proposed Reproductive Freedom for All constitutional amendment states that every “person has a fundamental right to reproductive freedom,” including decisions related to pregnancy, childbirth and prenatal care, abortion, abortion, contraception, sterilization, and infertility. The constitutional amendment guarantees the right to abortion until the fetus is viable, at which point the state can enact regulations as long as they do not prohibit abortions deemed medically necessary to protect a mother’s physical or mental health. Fetal viability is defined as when a child can survive outside the womb without “emergency medical measures”. That time can vary “depending on the specific health circumstance of an individual pregnancy,” but is usually considered to occur around 24 weeks, said Ashlea Phenicie, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Michigan. Anti-abortion groups opposing the petition called it an “anything goes” proposal because they said it would overturn several existing laws, including the state’s dormant abortion ban and rules requiring parental consent for minors seeking abortion or other reproductive health care. They have also argued that exceptions for the mother’s physical or mental health provide a low threshold for late-term abortions. “If they end up on the ballot, we look forward to getting any of those signatories to vote no,” said Kristen Polo of the opposition group Citizens for Michigan Women and Children. “And we think we will because even those who support abortion are not likely to support the things that are hidden in the text of the amendment.” Michigan’s abortion ban currently does not apply in Michigan because a court order halted enforcement of the law pending a lawsuit challenging it. The lawsuit, filed by Planned Parenthood of Michigan, seeks to invalidate the state’s abortion ban by establishing that the right to abortion already exists in the state constitution. A separate lawsuit, filed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in Oakland County District Court, seeks a similar ruling. In May, state Court of Claims Judge Elizabeth Gleicher issued a preliminary injunction in the Planned Parenthood lawsuit preventing the state’s abortion ban from being enforced while the case is pending. Gleicher’s decision, which is being appealed through two channels to the Court of Appeals, found that Planned Parenthood was likely to succeed in its argument that abortion is protected by the right to due process, which provides a right to bodily autonomy. If voters in November pass the Reproductive Freedom for All initiative, the amendment would go into effect 45 days later or sometime in December.
Promote the Vote
The broad Promote the Vote ballot initiative will expand on a successful ballot proposal approved by voters in 2018 that allowed absentee voting among other issues. The constitutional amendment, if passed, would override efforts by the group Secure MI Vote for stricter voter ID rules. Secure MI Vote is still fundraising for its petition, which it hopes to eventually bring before the GOP-led Legislature for a vote. Promote the Vote 2022 enlisted the help of 27 organizations, including Voters Not Politicians, to help gather signatures for the proposal, said Michael Davis, executive director of Promote the Vote. “Voters across Michigan want an election system that is safe and accessible,” Davis said. “Promote the Vote 2022’s common sense provisions do just that.” The Promote the Vote initiative was nothing more than a counterattack to the Secure MI Vote proposal and would undo existing voting protections, said Jamie Roe, a spokesman for Secure MI Vote. He said Secure MI Vote plans to submit signatures to the bureau “very soon.” “While we want to secure the vote, they want to make it easier to cheat, and we’re going to fight like crazy to make sure that … doesn’t pass,” Roe said. Spencer on Monday denied that Promote the Vote was reactionary and said much of the content was based on polls of Michigan voters. “We saw that it was important,” Spencer said. “We looked at the 2020 election, even the 2018 election, and we see where there could be improvements and we built on that.” The new proposal would allow nine days of in-person early voting before Election Day, require the state to pay for the postage of absentee ballots and ensure safe polls in every community. The proposal would also allow voters to register on a permanent absentee list, allow election officials to accept third-party donations and ensure that military or foreign ballots postmarked before Election Day and received within six days of the election are still being counted. The ballot initiative would require audits to be conducted publicly by state and party officials and would entrench the role of investigators in certifying election results. The plan would also enshrine Michigan’s current voter ID rules, which allow voters to show a photo ID or fill out an affidavit verifying their identity. [email protected]
