By Mary Pollock
We are in the countdown to the midterm election period ending on Tuesday, November 3, at 8 p.m. in this premier battleground state. The world is watching us. Consequently, announced and scheduled legislative session days have usually been held with no roll call, no voting, and no attendance because legislators and their campaigns are back in their districts running to retain their seats or help others in their party. No bills advanced to the Governor’s office in all of August and none are likely for September either. Lame duck is always a possibility for some legislative action,
MICHIGAN BALLOT FINALIZED
After major and minor party conventions and last-minute Michigan and U.S. Supreme Court rulings on ballot challenges, the statewide ballot was finalized by the September 4 deadline and sent to local election clerks. Clerks will add local races and local ballot issues before printing ballots and administering the remaining election process.
Schedule to Know – Absentee ballots in Michigan are scheduled for availability on September 24, which means if you’ve asked for it to be mailed to you, you will receive it a few days later. The Constitutionally mandated early in-person voting period is October 24 – November. 1, but your voting jurisdiction may expand the early voting days. The last day to register to vote or change your voting address within your current voting jurisdiction by mail or online is October 19. New voter registrations or change of voting jurisdiction within Michigan are required in person with proof of identification and residency from October 20 through November 3, 2026. You can check your voter status, track your absentee ballot, find drop box locations, and learn many details about the election process at www.michigan.gov/vote.
U.S. Senate Candidate Debates Set – Michigan’s two major party U.S. Senate candidates have agreed to meet twice on television in October. Abdul El-Sayed, an Ann Arbor Democrat, and Mike Rogers, a White Lake Township Republican, will debate October 8 at WOOD TV8 in Grand Rapids at 7 p.m. and again October 21 at WXYZ-TV in Detroit. Both debates will be carried statewide.
These two meetings are the only debates both campaigns have committed to before November’s election. The seat will be one of the most closely watched in the country because it could decide control of the U.S. Senate.
FEDERAL ELECTION EXECUTIVE ORDER
President Trump issued an Executive Order (EO) in March 2026 announcing major changes in the way the U.S. Postal Service will handle absentee ballot delivery and processing, requiring a certain format for the envelope and having state and local officials submit lists of voters – possibly multiple times a day – through an online portal that has not yet been made public at this writing. An anonymous whistleblower has submitted a report to Congress describing the portal as riddled with errors and at risk of a catastrophic failure.
According to the Washington Post, Trump has long argued that mail ballots are prone to fraud, though evidence over many elections and independent investigations suggests that mail-in balloting is secure and that any fraud is exceedingly rare. Trump regularly votes by mail, including in last month’s primaries in Florida. In Michigan’s recent primary, 58 percent of voters used the absentee ballot process, so any disruption in delivery and processing could have a major impact on Michigan’s election results.
Challenge – Since the U.S. Constitution gives the Congress and the states exclusive authority over election laws and administration with no role for the President, there have been legal challenges to the EO including from the State of Michigan and other states, election administrator associations, and voting rights organizations. A setback to Trump’s plans came September 4, when U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Massachusetts issued an injunction barring the new postal rules for the midterm elections. She wrote that the postal policy “threatens disenfranchisement of millions of United States citizens who seek to vote by mail.”
On September 6, the Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to pause the injunction, saying its reasoning is “baseless” and erroneously blocks the president’s goals. Voters need to watch the news for any decisions affecting voting in Michigan.
Meanwhile, many states have already sent out ballots by the time you read this. State election administrators are making plans for alternative distribution of absentee ballots by commercial mail services or at pop-up convenient offices if there is potential chaos in ballot delivery and processing. Voters might want to consider returning absentee ballots to a drop box instead of through the U.S. Postal Service or just taking your ballot to an early voting site or your election day precinct and putting it through the tabulator.
MICHIGAN BALLOT ISSUES
There will only be two statewide issues on the ballot this year after Board of State Canvassers and Supreme Court decisions.
Americans for Citizen Voting – In a dramatic and surprising turn of events, the Americans for Citizen Voting (ACV) proposed constitutional amendment to require purging non-citizens from the voting rolls and new proof of identification requirements for all voters was not successful in its attempt to get on the ballot.
ACV collected 709,841 petition signatures and needed only 446,198 valid voter signatures. The Bureau of Elections staff pulled a random sample of 1,000 signatures for validation. ACV needed 629 from the sample to be valid. Bureau of Elections staff found only 612 valid signatures. There were issues with duplicates, damaged petitions, errors, and other problems. ACV was able to convince the majority of the Board at a 6-hour meeting on August 24 that 14 of the problem signatures were valid, bringing them to 626 – still short 3 voter signatures.
The Michigan Board of State Canvassers deadlocked in a 2-2 vote on advancing the measure to the ballot. ACV’s appeals to the Michigan and U.S. Supreme Courts failed.
Proposal 2026 – 1 – Proposal 2026-1 is the automatic ballot proposal voters face every 16 years about whether to call a Constitutional Convention. The last convention was in 1961-62 with voters narrowly passing the proposed constitution in 1963. Voters have rejected the three previous proposals to call a convention. The last time the proposal was before voters in 2010, it failed with nearly 70 percent of voters rejecting it. There is no organized campaign to support a yes vote on Proposal 1 so far.
Proposal 2026-01 will ask voters:
Shall a convention of elected delegates be called for the purpose of a general revision of the Michigan Constitution, any such revision to be submitted to the voters for ratification?
The Citizens Research Council of Michigan is publishing a series of papers to provide information which voters may use to decide whether the convening of a constitutional convention is in the best interest of Michigan at this time. The Citizens Research Council takes no position on the question of calling a constitutional convention. Find the papers at www.crcmich.org/publications.
Proposal 2026-2 – Having already found on July 24 that the Michiganders for Money Out of Politics (MMOP) ballot proposal had sufficient valid signatures for the measure to be forwarded to the Legislature for its consideration, on August 17 the Board of State Canvassers approved a 100-word summary of the proposed statute to amend Michigan’s campaign finance laws.
As approved by the Board of State Canvassers, the 100-word summary reads to “prohibit regulated electric and gas utilities, contractors with over $250,000 annually in government contracts, and people and organizations with substantial connections to these utilities/contractors from making direct or indirect campaign contributions to those who run for or hold offices that impact them; expand campaign finance laws and restrictions that regulate spending on political communications, including laws that require disclosing donor information, to apply to communications clearly identifying candidate or ballot questions, even if they do not expressly advocate voting for/against them; expressly apply the law requiring disclosure of who paid for political communications to internet political communications.”
Legislative Choices – The Legislature has three choices for a voter-initiated statute: 1) do nothing and let the measure go to the ballot for voters to decide (preferred by MMOP backers because in the future it would take a 3/4 legislative majority to amend a statute passed by voters), 2) pass the measure and potentially amend it in the future by a simple legislative majority, or 3) propose an alternative in which case both the proposed voter-initiated law and the proposed legislatively-initiated law would be put on the ballot for voter decision.
Legislative Response – On August 25, the Republican-led Michigan House voted 77-26 to approve the proposal that would prohibit utilities and contractors from making campaign contributions. Senate Leader Winnie Brinks (D-Grand Rapids) has announced that the Senate would not take action, meaning voters will decide in November.
Legal Challenge Fails – A lawsuit challenging the Board’s certification of the MMOP petitions failed in the Michigan Supreme Court on September 3.
OF NOTE
The SERA Coordinating Council is looking for applicants for the position of SERA Legislative Representative starting in 2027. I will train the selected person so don’t feel you are not qualified if you haven’t done this kind of work in the past. See the SERA website at www.sera-mi.org for a job description and how to apply.
Mary Pollock is the Lansing SERA chapter and SERA Coordinating Council Legislative Representative. She may be contacted at michigansera@comcast.net.