A ballot measure to limit political donations from Michigan’s public utilities and major government contractors faces a challenge on its way to voters.
The challenge alleges that the Michiganders for Money Out of Politics campaign did not collect enough valid signatures to get on the ballot. This is based on a sample of a thousand signatures.
To qualify, at least 636 of these collected signatures must be valid.
Behind the signature challenge is the counter-campaign Protect MI Free Speech. Several concerns were raised about the signatures in the sample, such as duplicates, signatures that do not match handwritten records, and incorrect addresses.
Protect MI free speech spokesman John Sellek said there were enough concerns to remove the petition from the ballot. But just in case, he wants election officials to also consider the problems his group says it found with the rest of the petitions.
Sellek claimed that petition circulators – who are supposed to collect signatures from members of the public – instead signed their own sheets multiple times.
“If we want to have these rules to protect what is a civil right to initiate legislation outside of the legislature, we cannot allow that to be done fraudulently. We cannot have marketers violating the rules or the law,” Sellek said.
The rules for petitions are strict. In 2022, several campaigns were removed from the ballot because they were embroiled in a scandal in which petition distributors forged signatures.
Michiganders for Money Out of Politics says it is confident in the signature sheets submitted. Sean McBrearty is co-chair of the campaign. Last week, he held a press conference ahead of the challenge’s deadline in which he said the group had exceeded the requirements.
“First, we submitted more than 200,000 signatures above the threshold required to get on the ballot, representing 356,958 valid signatures collected over 180 days. Second, our historic grassroots petition effort was driven by thousands of volunteers who collected signatures in every single county across Michigan for more than a year. Third, we spent weeks before submitting our petitions quality control, working with statistical experts,” said McBrearty.
At this point there was no objection to the signature. But McBrearty preemptively dismissed the concerns.
“To be clear, any legal challenge to our petition signatures is not because we don’t have enough valid signatures to qualify for the vote. It’s because the major corporations opposing this initiative would now rather grasp at any straw to take us down – when it’s cheapest – than fight us at the ballot box, where we have the support of 8 out of 10 Michigan residents,” he said.
When reached for comment Monday, the campaign stood by that statement.
However, Sellek argued that raising these concerns was part of ensuring proper compliance with the process.
“It’s baffling that they preemptively held a press conference to claim their signatures were perfect and dupe people who have legitimate policy concerns they want to discuss. And they’re being lied to because the signatures are clearly a mess,” Sellek said.
The state elections office staff is currently going through the signatures and assessing the challenges. They are scheduled to make a recommendation to the Board of State Canvassers later this month on whether to move forward with the petition.
https://www.michiganpublic.org/politics-government/2026-07-13/money-out-of-politics-faces-petition-signature-challenge-as-campaign-works-toward-november-ballot
