Michigan's 'money out of politics' group confident in signature validity as it faces new challenge

Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers plan to take up the Michiganders for Money Out Of Politics petition next week, assessing both the sufficiency of its signatures collected over the last year, as well as a direct challenge to those signatures.

The board will meet to review the petitions on Friday, July 24, after it approved the initiative for collection in August 2025. Organizers for the initiative turned in their signature petitions to the Michigan Bureau of Elections in late May, amassing more than 562,000 signatures. The group only needs to submit at least 356,958 valid signatures — 8% of the votes cast for governor in 2022 — in order to qualify for the November ballot.

Michiganders for Money Out of Politics, which aims to ban utility companies and government contractors from making campaign contributions, has touted that its effort was mostly volunteer-based and that it only used paid signature collectors within the last few months. That, by proxy, should help the initiative avoid the hangups that past initiatives or candidates have run into when they hire paid signature collectors.

Of note, the 2022 Republican gubernatorial slate was rocked when half of its primary candidates were booted from the ballot because they used the same paid-signature collection firm, and that firm was found to have fraudulently added signatures to petitions on voters’ behalf.


https://michiganadvance.com/2026/07/17/michigans-money-out-of-politics-group-confident-in-signature-validity-as-it-faces-new-challenge/