Bureau Staff: Citizen Voting Petition 11,775 Signatures Short

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 08/17/2026) A proposed constitutional amendment requiring Michigan voters to prove their U.S. citizenship before voting appears headed for rejection after Bureau of Elections staff Monday concluded the petition drive fell an estimated 11,775 valid signatures short of qualifying for the November ballot.

In a staff report released Monday, the Bureau recommended the Board of State Canvassers determine the Americans for Citizen Voting–Michigan petition is insufficient when the board meets Aug. 24.

Of 1,000 petition signatures randomly sampled, staff ultimately determined 612 were valid. The campaign needed at least 629 valid signatures in the sample to qualify.

That works out to a 61.2% validity rate, below the 62.9% the campaign needed. Based on the sample, staff estimated the petition contained 434,423 valid signatures, compared to the 446,198 required.

The finding is a setback for Americans for Citizen Voting–Michigan, which announced March 4 that it had turned in roughly 750,000 signatures and appeared to have an enormous cushion over the constitutional minimum.

The Bureau's official count, however, was 709,841 signatures, about 40,000 fewer than organizers had announced. Even at that number, the campaign had submitted 59.1% more raw signatures than necessary.

The proposal would require voters to prove U.S. citizenship by showing the Secretary of State or another designated official a passport, birth certificate or other acceptable documentation before being permitted to vote after Nov. 2, 2027.

It also would require photo identification to vote, eliminate the current affidavit option for voters who don't have identification with them and require election officials to take additional steps to remove noncitizens from the Qualified Voter File.

Republicans have rallied around the proposal, arguing voters overwhelmingly support requiring identification and ensuring only U.S. citizens participate in elections.

The petition's problems became apparent during the Bureau's initial review. Of the 1,000 sampled signatures, staff initially found 692 valid and 308 invalid.

Among the rejected signatures were 129 from people who weren't registered in the city or township listed on the petition, 92 because the signature was missing or didn't sufficiently match the voter's signature on file, 31 because of date problems and 29 because of errors involving circulator information.

That initial review still left the campaign with what staff described as a 63-signature cushion within the sample.

But Robert LabBrant and Promote the Vote Action challenged 377 of the sampled signatures. Of those, 217 had already been rejected by staff, leaving another 160 challenges involving signatures the Bureau had initially considered valid.

After reviewing the challenges, staff knocked another 85 signatures out of the valid column, dropping the total from 692 to 607.

The biggest issue was duplicate signatures. Staff accepted challenges to 59 sampled signatures because the same voter had signed elsewhere in the petition filing. Staff also accepted challenges involving 15 additional circulator-information errors and seven signatures involving what the report categorized as indications of circulator fraud.

Americans for Citizen Voting responded by seeking to restore 149 challenged signatures. Staff agreed to rehabilitate five — two involving alleged duplicate signatures and three involving alleged circulator fraud — bringing the final valid sample to 612.

Among the circulator issues, staff found four sampled signatures connected to a circulator whose name and jurisdiction were repeatedly misspelled and whose signature did not sufficiently match the signature in the Qualified Voter File. The campaign did not seek to rehabilitate those signatures.

Promote the Vote Action also raised a separate legal challenge alleging the petition is defective because it did not republish every section of the Michigan Constitution that would be altered or abrogated if the amendment were adopted.

Americans for Citizen Voting countered that the Board of State Canvassers doesn't have the authority to decide that type of constitutional question and argued that, regardless, the proposal would not abrogate the provisions cited by the challengers.

Bureau staff declined to make a recommendation on the merits of that legal dispute, writing that it raises questions about the meaning of the Michigan Constitution and the effect of the proposed amendments.

For the moment, however, the signature count alone would be enough to keep the proposal off the ballot.

The Board of State Canvassers is scheduled to make the final determination on the petition Aug. 24.