Lansing: A voting committee that sought to enshrine the right to abortion in the Michigan Constitution on Monday delivered 753,759 signatures, a record amount that exceeds by more than 300,000 the number of signatures required by the state.
A second voting committee that sought to extend voting rights to the state constitution to include early voting in person and late votes by the foreign military also surpassed the state’s previous signature record. On Monday it collected and delivered 669,972 signatures.
The state Elections Office in the coming weeks will review the validity of the signatures of Reproductive Freedom for All and Promote the signatures of the 2022 Vote to ensure that the initiative has the 425,059 signatures needed to appear in the vote. November. Based on its findings, the office will make a recommendation to the State Board of Collectors for or against certification for voting.
The deadline for certification for the November ballot is Sept. 9, but organizers say the Michigan Elections Office will likely make recommendations sooner and may consider certifications at Collectors Board meetings. of the state in August, said Steven Liedel, Advocate for Reproductive Freedom for All Initiative.
Reproductive Freedom for All saw an increase in volunteers and signatures after a leaked U.S. Supreme Court opinion leaked in May signaled Roe’s downfall. The published opinion of the high court was published on June 24, nullifying Roe by a decision of 6-3.
More than 62,000 people have been involved in or supported the Reproductive Freedom for All effort since it was announced in January, and more than 30,000 of those people showed up after the May leak, he said. say the group.
“The annulment by the Supreme Court of Roe v. Wade will not remove the rights and freedoms of the people of Michigan to determine if and when they become parents,” the executive director of the American Union of Michigan Civil Liberties, Loren Khogali, in a statement.
“We will not allow forced pregnancy in our state, nor will we remain vigilant when the devastating impacts of a post-Roe world disproportionately affect people of color, LGBTQ + communities, youth, low-income people, and those they live in rural areas. This is your body, your vote, your choice. ”
Both election initiative groups said they used quality control exams to ensure the signatures submitted to the office were valid, and noted the disastrous consequences of avoiding the review for five of the 10 Republican aspiring governors. .
“We had a very careful procedure with our signature collection,” said Khalilah Spencer, president of Promote the Vote. “We made sure to review each signature. The ones that were problematic, we touched on them. What we delivered we are very sure are valid signatures.”
The Reproductive Freedom for All effort collected at least 911,496 signatures, but ended up removing 10,398 sheets or 150,737 signatures during its quality control review, Liedel said. Among those removed were a scattering of petition sheets filled out by circulators accused of forgery in government primaries and others removed for facial defects.
“There is a fairly thorough review process that involved both a facial review, a manual review, a scan and other elements to ensure that both the application forms and the signatures on these sheets were valid to the best extent possible given the volume, ”Liedel said.
Michigan ACLU President Nathan Triplett said Saturday that no petition initiative in Michigan history has “come close” to the number of signatures collected for the Reproductive Freedom for All initiative. He said the next closest was the 2012 Protect Our Jobs union initiative, which delivered 670,771 signatures but was defeated at the polls.
If Reproductive Freedom for All and Promote the 2022 Vote were to be voted on in November, they would join another proposed constitutional amendment that would alter the state’s mandate limits.
Reproductive freedom for all
The constitutional amendment proposed by Reproductive Freedom for All states that every “individual has a fundamental right to reproductive freedom,” including decisions related to pregnancy, postpartum and prenatal care, miscarriage, abortion, contraception, sterilization, and infertility.
The constitutional amendment guarantees the right to abortion to fetal viability, at which point the state can establish regulations as long as they do not prohibit abortions deemed medically necessary to protect a mother’s physical or mental health.
Fetal viability is defined as when a child can survive outside the womb without “extraordinary medical measures.” This time may vary “depending on the specific health circumstance of an individual pregnancy,” but is usually considered to occur around 24 weeks, said Ashlea Phenicie, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Michigan.
Anti-abortion groups that oppose the petition initiative have dubbed it the “everything is worthwhile” proposal because they said it would counter several existing laws, including banning largely inactive abortion from the status and rules that require parental consent for minors seeking abortions or other reproductive health services. They have also argued that exceptions to the mother’s physical or mental health provide a low threshold for late abortions.
“If they end up voting, we hope to convince any of these signatories to vote no,” said Christen Pollo of the Citizens opposition group in support of Michigan women and children. “And we think we will because even those who support abortion probably don’t support the things that are hidden in the text of the amendment.”
The Michigan abortion ban is currently not being enforced in Michigan because a court order stopped law enforcement while there is a lawsuit challenging it.
The lawsuit, filed by Planned Parenthood of Michigan, seeks to overturn the state ban on abortion by establishing that the right to abortion already exists in the state constitution. A separate lawsuit, filed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in Oakland County Circuit Court, seeks a similar decision.
In May, State Court of Appeals Judge Elizabeth Gleicher issued a preliminary precautionary measure in the Planned Parenthood lawsuit that prevents the application of the state ban on abortion while the case is pending.
Gleicher’s ruling, which is appealed through two channels to the Court of Appeals, held that Planned Parenthood would probably succeed with its argument that abortion was protected by the right to due process, which grants the right to bodily autonomy.
Should voters approve the Reproductive Freedom for All election initiative in November, the amendment would take effect 45 days later, or sometime in December.
Promote the vote
The broad voting initiative Promotes voting would expand a successful voting proposal approved by voters in 2018 that allowed for absentee voting without reason, among other points.
The constitutional amendment, if passed, would outweigh the efforts of the Secure MI Vote group to tighten voter identification rules. Secure MI Vote is still meeting for his petition, which he hopes to present to the GOP-led Legislature for approval.
Promote the Vote 2022 enlisted the help of 27 organizations, including Voters Not Politicians, to help collect signatures for the proposal, said Michael Davis, executive director of Promote the Vote.
“Voters across Michigan want a safe and accessible electoral system,” Davis said. “The common sense provisions of Promote the Vote 2022 do.”
The Promote the Vote initiative was nothing more than a counteroffensive to the Secure MI Vote proposal and undoing existing electoral protections, said Jamie Roe, a spokesman for Secure MI Vote. He said Secure MI Vote intends to present its signatures to the office “very soon”.
“While we want to secure the vote, they want it to be easier to cheat and we’ll fight like crazy to make sure … that doesn’t happen,” Roe said.
Spencer denied Monday that the Promote the Vote initiative was reactionary and said much of the content was based on polls from Michigan voters.
“We saw it was important,” Spencer said. “We looked at the 2020 election, even the 2018 election, and we see where there could be improvements and we built them.”
The new proposal would allow nine days of early voting in person before election day, would require the state to pay for postage of absentee ballots, and would guarantee safe ballot boxes for each community.
The proposal would also allow voters to join a list of permanent votes in absentia, allow election officials to accept donations from third parties, and ensure that military or foreign ballots are sealed before election day and received within six days after the election are still counted.
The voting initiative would require audits to be conducted publicly by state and party officials and would consolidate the role of collectors in certifying election results.
The plan would also enshrine in the constitution Michigan’s current voter identification rules, which allow voters in person to show photo identification or fill out a sworn statement proving their identity.
eleblanc@detroitnews.com