- Group pushing proof-of-citizenship voting proposal says it has enough signatures to qualify for Michigan ballot
- Americans for Citizens Voting raised millions of dollars for the petition drive, mostly from nonprofits that don’t disclose their donors
- Voting rights groups have panned the proposal, with one voting to ‘deploy every tool’ to stop it
LANSING — A group aiming to tighten voter ID rules and require proof of citizenship to register in Michigan says it has collected more than enough signatures to make the November ballot.
The Americans for Citizen Voting ballot committee needs to collect 446,196 valid voter signatures to put its proposal before voters this fall.
Kristin Combs, the group’s general consultant, said Tuesday she’s confident the committee has more than enough to make the ballot now, but will continue collecting signatures until turning them in later this month.
“We’re going to finish strong,” Combs told Bridge Michigan, noting the group aims to collect more signatures than necessary before submitting them to the state for review, potential validation and certification.
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The proposal would require Michiganders to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote, show a photo ID each election to have their ballot counted and require the secretary of state to purge the voter rolls of every person whose citizenship cannot be verified.
“We want everyone who’s eligible to vote to be able to vote, and we don’t want to make it harder,” said Paul Jacob, chairman of the national Americans for Citizen Voting. “It will be harder for people who are not eligible.”
Voting rights groups have panned the proposal.
“Plain and simple: this proposal undermines our right to vote,” an official with Voters Not Politicians said Tuesday. The advocacy group had organized a “decline to sign” campaign against the petition, which would undo more relaxed voter ID provisions in a successful 2022 measure it backed.
If state officials validate signatures for the proof-of-citizenship petition, it would become Proposal 2 on Michigan’s November ballot, joining a constitutional convention referendum that will automatically go before voters.
Dark money flows
A new disclosure report filed Monday showed Americans for Citizen Voting raised millions of dollars for the petition drive, including $1.1 million in the reporting period that ran through the end of 2025.
The effort has been almost exclusively funded by two nonprofits that are not legally required to disclose their donors, Restoration of America and the Liberty Initiative Fund.
The two organizations gave the ballot committee a combined $4.9 million in 2025. Combs told Bridge the group had an issue with its disclosure report and actually raised $6 million for the year, matching what it had reported spending.
Combs said she didn’t know if there was “a glitch on our end” or with the state’s new campaign finance system, which has been plagued by technical issues since its launch last year. Secretary of State spokesperson Angela Benander told Bridge the group “made some errors on their filing” that officials would work with them to correct.
Unlike some other recent Michigan ballot proposals that relied exclusively on volunteers to gather signatures, Americans for Citizen Voting – Michigan reported paying at least $5.4 million to petition and signature gathering firms. Some paid circulators have reportedly been caught lying about the intent of the proposal. The group also utilized volunteers.
Michigan has in recent years significantly expanded the opportunities for residents to register to vote and cast ballots through both ballot initiatives and laws passed by Democrats in the state Legislature.
Voters Not Politicians, which supported two of those initiatives, argued the new citizenship and ID proposal would create “additional red tape and bureaucracy.” The group vowed to continue the fight if the measure makes the ballot.
“We’re going to deploy every tool at our disposal to reach and educate voters in order to protect Michiganders’ constitutional right to secure, modern and accessible elections,” VNP Executive Director Christy McGillivray said in a statement.
Jacob said he expects opponents will spend at least $10 million to stop the proposal. “We think that the voters like it, and so we can be outspent, and we’ll still win,” he told Bridge.
What the proposal would do
The proposed constitutional amendment has three provisions long called for by people skeptical of the security of Michigan elections.
Would-be voters would have to provide proof of citizenship at the time of registration. Eligible identity documents would include passports, photo IDs combined with certified birth certificates, naturalization documents and military identification that shows the place of birth. The measure includes some caveats for people who can’t afford to procure the documents or had their proof destroyed in some way.
Under the constitutional amendment passed in 2022, voters without ID can cast a ballot by signing an affidavit attesting to their identity. Lying on the affidavit is a crime, but election officials can’t undo the vote once it’s cast.
The proposal would still allow voters without ID to cast a provisional ballot, but they would have to follow up with election officials later and provide ID to have their ballot counted.
All other methods of voting and registration in Michigan would still be maintained, Jacob said. Any voter without verified citizenship after November 2027 could only vote provisional ballots until their citizenship is verified.
Critics of stricter voter ID laws argue the measures would put up barriers to voting, but it isn’t clear whether they reduce overall turnout in elections.
If passed, the secretary of state would also be required to conduct an audit of the state’s voter rolls and individually verify the citizenship of every person present, removing any whose citizenship cannot be verified. Voters slated for removal would receive a letter in the mail and have 45 days to provide proof of citizenship before being removed. Voters could also proactively verify their eligibility by sending proof of citizenship to state election officials.
Michigan’s voter rolls, which contain more registered voters than the eligible voting population, have been a source of partisan rancor for years.
Republican election-season lawsuits attempting to force a purge of Michigan’s voter rolls in the past have repeatedly failed. State officials and election security experts have stressed that Michigan’s voter rolls are routinely audited but are limited by federal law in how quickly entries can be removed.
Evidence of non-citizens voting in Michigan’s elections is very rare, but election integrity activists have seized on the documented instances when it’s occurred as proof the system needs to be shored up.
Last year, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s office flagged 15 suspected noncitizens out of 5.7 million voters in the 2024 election. More recently, Benson acknowledged a noncitizen may have voted in 2018.
“Whether you think there’s a lot of fraud or a medium amount, or a tiny amount, or none … everything that this measure has is common sense,” Jacob argued.
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