A bipartisan state elections board has certified the campaign to ban political donations from committees linked to utilities and public contractors. The Michigan Board of State Canvassers determined the campaign has gathered enough signatures from registered voters to move ahead.
The Michiganders for Money Out of Politics [MMOP] campaign faced a barrage of signature challenges that played out over a marathon hours-long meeting in Lansing. In the end, finding a single-digit margin of valid signatures, the Board certified the initiative by a 3-1 vote.
“What we have here today is the culmination of thousands of Michiganders, Michigan citizens, Republicans, Democrats and independents, exercising their constitutional and statutory right to reform their government,” said Michael Brady, an attorney for Michiganders for Money Out of Politics.
MMOP successfully fended off challenges to its signatures after a voluminous filing that nevertheless came in very close following a vetting of a random sample of signatures by the Michigan Bureau of Elections.
Gary Gordon is an attorney with Protect MI Free Speech, the business group opposing the initiative. He said the initiative campaign did a sloppy job of signature-gathering and did not leave the state enough time to check its work.
“The staff review of these petitions was truncated by the petitioners gaming the system,” he said. “They gamed the system by filing way more than the number of signatures they required, thereby increasing the burden on the staff, and they waited until the last minute.”
Both sides and the board engaged in a lengthy, painstaking review going over signature by signature on some petitions before the board reached its conclusion that the campaign cleared the 356,958-signature threshold.
The next step is for the initiative to go to the Legislature, which will have 40 days from when the initiative is received to approve it, reject it or ignore it. If the Legislature fails to approve the measure – which seems likely, given it's divided between a GOP-controlled House and a Senate led by Democrats – the question goes to the November ballot.
The initiative is gearing up for an election campaign, said MMOP co-chair Christy McGillivray.
“Today is proof that a people-powered movement can stand up to some of the most powerful special interests in Michigan,” she said. "Now we must continue to mobilize across the state because our opposition, backed by billion-dollar corporations, is going to do anything they can to stop us from holding them accountable and changing the way our politics work in Lansing.”
