MARY ELLEN GUREWITZ, vice chair of the Michigan Board of State Canvassers, during a board meeting Friday. (Screenshot/Michigan Advance)

As members of the Board of State Canvassers met Friday to consider petition language for a proposed Constitutional amendment requiring proof of citizenship to vote, discussions between the language of the proposal and its merits frequently shifted to debates about voters’ rights and concerns about noncitizen voting.

After a number of revisions to the summary language, the board, which is made up of two Democrats and two Republicans, voted unanimously to approve the proposal language and the form.

The final language approved by the board reads:

“Constitutional amendment to: add requirement to verify citizenship by showing a birth certificate, passport and/or other documents for voter registration; eliminate affidavit alternative for those without photo ID when voting; add requirement to provide photo ID or driver’s license or partial social security number to receive our vote in absentee ballot; require Secretary of State to review voter rolls to verify citizens and remove non citizens using documents and government records; prohibit counting ballots from voters without citizenship documents and photo ID unless voters show documents within six days after election; require hardship program for obtaining required documents at state expense.”

The proposed amendment mirrors an effort introduced by state Rep. Bryan Posthumus, R-Rockford, after a Chinese citizen attending the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor cast a ballot in the previous election. When Posthumus’ proposal was put forth in December, an organization called the Committee to Protect Voters’ Rights launched a website proposing a petition drive to get an amendment on the ballot if lawmakers do not take up the proposal.

While Posthumus reintroduced the proposal in January, the effort has yet to come up for a vote on the House floor, with Democrats calling its provisions akin to a “poll tax”. Meanwhile, the Committee to Protect Voters’ Rights has moved forward with a ballot proposal effort.

In order to appear on the 2026 ballot, the committee must gather 446,198 signatures within 180 days and file them with the Secretary of State.

During the meeting, the board’s Democratic members as well as representatives from several voting rights groups argued the initial summary, as well as edits proposed by the group sponsoring the proposal, failed to capture the full impact of the amendment.

Alongside concerns that the proposal would disenfranchise married women, low-income individuals, seniors, people living in rural communities and people who are homeless and cannot access the documents needed to prove their identity, board members and opponents raised concerns about how the proposal would impact individuals who have signed up to vote absentee in every election, as well as what documents could be used to prove citizenship.

Democrat Mary Ellen Gurewitz, the board’s vice chair, specifically raised concerns about birth certificates being listed in the summary, as married women who change their names would be required to submit both a birth certificate and a marriage license to verify their identity, though Committee to Protect Voters’ Rights attorney Charles Spies said this process was not unique to voting alone.

Gurewitz further argued that the proposal would strip voters of their rights, pointing to Proposal 18-3 and Proposal 22-2, where Michigan residents voted to expand voting rights to include no-reason absentee voting, nine days of early voting, use of a photo ID or signed affidavit to verify their identity, placement on a permanent absentee voter list and access to ballot drop boxes.

However, Spies argued the proposal was not removing any right, but rather was protecting the rights of Michiganders to “not have their votes diluted.”

While noncitizens are not eligible to vote in federal, state or most local elections, some municipalities do allow them to vote in their elections.

Instances of noncitizen voting are exceedingly rare, with Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson issuing a press release on April 3, noting that the state saw 16 credible cases of noncitizen voting in the November 2024 election out of more than 5.7 million total votes cast, though several members of the public who spoke up at Friday’s meeting argued that any instance of noncitizen voting watered down their right to vote.

Paul Cordes, one of the board’s Republicans members, also argued that any number of voters cast illegally within the state is a problem with the system.

Heather Cummings, the other Democrat on the board, concurred with Gurewitz, arguing that characterizing the proposal as an effort to protect voter rights is misleading. She later questioned how the proposal would impact the ability for Michigan residents to register to vote online.

Charles Thomas Jr., the founder of the voter rights organization When You Vote — I Win, testified on his own behalf pointing to discrepancies between his and his father’s name on his birth certificate, his name on his driver’s license and his name on his passport.

“I’m a junior. I love the fact that you know, you all asked me to spell my name. On my birth certificate. I found that my father’s name is spelled C, H, A, R L, E, Y. My name is spelled C, H, A, R, L, I, E. On my license is C H A R L, E, S. I got a passport, C, H, A, R, L, E, S. I’m not sure which one would count if I had to produce information to say who I was in order just to be able to obtain the right to vote,” Thomas said.

Erica Peresman, the Senior Advisor for Promote the Vote, which successfully backed both the 2018 and 2022 voting rights amendments, told the Michigan Advance that these difficult-to-correct discrepancies should not be a barrier to voting.

While the proposal would have the Legislature craft a program to ensure citizens facing hardship have the documents needed to cast their ballot, the way that program would operate remains up in the air, Peresman said, predicting that state officials would not be the ones helping residents from out of state retrieve their birth certificates from the place where they were born.

“They’re just going to pay the cost of it, the legwork and dealing with the bureaucracies in these various states, that all has to be done by the individuals….Our concern is always that people might just give up. They might not have the time, the energy, the resources to be able to run down all of these things, even if the actual cost of the document itself is being covered by the state,” Peresman said.

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