DELTA TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — Ballot drives to expand voting options, restrict payday loans and overhaul Michigan’s citizens initiative process cleared steps before the state elections board Friday, enabling organizers to start collecting hundreds of thousands of signatures to qualify for the 2022 ballot.
The canvassers approved summaries to appear atop five petitions that will be circulated to the public.
Promote the Vote wants to create more than a week of early voting, let all voters request an absentee ballot for future elections and require prepaid postage on return envelopes. Its constitutional amendment — proposed months after Republicans launched a veto-proof initiative they contend would improve election integrity but which Democrats say would curtail voting — also would prohibit attempts to “unreasonably” burden the right to vote and enshrine the board’s duty to certify results after Donald Trump’s unprecedented attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
