Keeping Candidate Addresses Off Petitions Considered In Committee

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 02/03/2026) The objectives of ensuring candidates and elected officials' privacy while also making their areas of residence more transparent to voters might seem to be somewhat in tension. A Rachelle Smit (R-Shelbyville) bill looks to move toward both.

She testified Tuesday during the House Committee on Election Integrity, which she chairs, on HB 5468. The legislation, as currently written, would make two main changes.

For one, it would remove a requirement for candidates running for public office to include a street address on their nominating petition. And though congressional candidates aren’t constitutionally required to reside in the district they’re running for, Smit’s bill would require them to indicate whether they do on their nominating petitions.

State representatives from both parties were broadly supportive of Smit’s bill during Tuesday’s committee meeting. However, they did raise some questions about just how effective the first prong of the legislation would be in bolstering the privacy of public officials and candidates, which many across the nation are seeking amid rising political violence and attacks on politicians.

That's mainly because the bill would only require candidates to put their city or township of residence on their nominating petition and not their specific address. A separate document needed to run for office would still contain it: the affidavit of identity. That document functions as a sworn legal filing with the secretary of state proving that a candidate is who they say they are.

Though it’s not likely to be circulated publicly in the way a nominating petition is, Smit, after being asked, clarified that the affidavit of identity is still subject to the Freedom of Information Act, and therefore, a public document. So, the bill doesn’t fully shield a candidate's address from public view.

That was a hangup for Rep. Mai Xiong (D-Warren).

“If the intent is to protect elected officials and candidates running, I think this bill stops short because of that affidavit of identity,” she said.

Rep. Pat Outman (R-Six Lakes) asked Smit about the “rationale” for trying to strike addresses from nominating petitions while keeping them on affidavits of identity. She replied, “I guess just to verify that they are indeed living where they do live, so you’re still maintaining that piece of it.”

Removing the address from one public document for privacy’s sake while keeping it on another “doesn’t really make sense to me,” Outman said. He continued, “Back home, they would just say we’re peeing in the wind.”

While it’s “good legislation,” Outman cautioned that “if there’s a psychopath out there, he’s probably going to find your address one way or another” (It would be unwise to target his residence, he added as a caveat, because “we’re firm believers in the Second Amendment.")

Smit agreed that there’s no sure-fire way to stop someone from doing harm to an elected official or candidate, but maintained her legislation “makes it one step easier to not have that exposure just out there.”

There was less discussion on the other significant change in Smit’s bill — to require congressional candidates to indicate on their nomination petitions whether they reside in the district they’re running for. (The Constitution merely requires such candidates to live in the state they’re running in.)

Xiong did note, as an aside, “I have a congressperson who ran in my district who doesn't live in the district." Though she didn't specify who she was referring to, the comment was seemingly in reference to U.S. Rep. John James (R-Shelby Township), who faced criticism in 2022 while running for the then-newly drawn 10th congressional district because he didn’t reside within its boundaries at the time.