LANSING, Mich. — A Michigan ballot committee said Wednesday that it collected more than 750,000 signatures in support of an effort to put a proposal before voters that would require individuals to provide proof of citizenship and photo ID in order to vote.

Americans for Citizen Voting planned to turn in its petition signatures Wednesday afternoon to the state Bureau of Elections and expects it has enough valid signatures to appear on the November ballot.

"When noncitizens vote and are allowed to vote, it divides us, it cheapens citizenship and creates distrust in our elections," said Paul Jacob, chairman of Americans for Citizen Voting, during a Wednesday press conference in Lansing.

In the coming months, the Bureau of Elections will review the group's signatures to ensure volunteers collected the minimum 446,198 valid signatures required for a constitutional amendment to qualify for a spot on the Nov. 3 ballot.

If the group clears that threshold, it would be considered Proposal 2, behind a question posed every 16 years regarding whether the state should hold a constitutional convention to revise the state constitution. Several other ballot initiatives are currently collecting signatures from voters across the state.

Samantha May, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Bureau of Elections, said the bureau was unlikely to begin reviews of signatures for Michigan ballot initiatives until after it had completed reviews of various candidate filings. The deadline for certification of those candidate filings is not until May.

"Once those are complete, (Bureau of Elections) will review the initiatives and constitutional amendments," May said.

Voters Not Politicians, a voting advocacy group that's been active in Michigan election issues since it successfully overhauled Michigan's redistricting process in 2018, is one of the chief opponents of the effort.

Melinda Billingsley, communications director for the group, argued the extra paperwork required under the amendment could be a burden to registered and non-registered voters alike and serve as a barrier to voting for more than 700,000 voters without easy access to the documents needed to verify citizenship.

"The extra bureaucracy, the extra paperwork and red tape that will come into play if this passes really goes against the heart of the constitution and the changes voters have supported over the past several years," Billingsley said of ballot initiatives seeking to improve voter access over the past several years.

Billingsley promised paid and grassroots opposition to the ballot campaign in the coming months.

"Election protection is absolutely going to be the focus of Voters Not Politicians from now until November, and that includes fighting this ballot initiative," she said.

State Rep. Ann Bollin, a Brighton Township Republican and former clerk, rejected the arguments against the proposal as fear-mongering and maintained confidence that voters would not be swayed by them.

"These are not high thresholds to meet," Bollin said. "The concern should not be, 'How do we do this?' It should be, 'What happens if we don’t?'”

At the end of 2025, Americans for Citizen Voting reported raising a cumulative $6.46 million. About $6 million of that came from Restoration of America, a Florida-based conservative advocacy nonprofit, and about $420,000 came from the Liberty Initiative Fund, a Virginia-based nonprofit, according to campaign finance filings.

Currently, under state and federal law, all voters must be U.S. citizens. Voters usually prove as much when they sign an affidavit at the time of registration attesting they are citizens.

But, in recent years, groups have been calling for more checks on that process, including requiring the Secretary of State to verify citizenship before completing registration.

Those calls heightened in the 2024 presidential election when a Chinese national enrolled at the University of Michigan illegally voted in the presidential election. A subsequent review by the Michigan Secretary of State's office identified 15 non-citizens who voted in the November 2024 presidential election.

In additional to the constitutional amendment being proposed by Americans for Citizens Voting, one other ballot proposal attempting to require the same proof of citizenship was prepared but does not appear to have been circulated. And Republican lawmakers have attempted to require similar proofs via resolutions and legislation.

The ballot initiative advanced by Americans for Citizens Voting would amend the constitution to require the Secretary of State to verify the citizenship of all registered voters, document it and remove non-citizens, if found, from the registered voter file. The language also would prohibit clerks from counting ballots from voters whose citizenship has not been verified unless those voters show records documenting their citizenship within six days of an election.

Individuals could verify their citizenship by showing a passport, birth certificate or other documents.

The constitutional amendment would require photo ID to vote and eliminate the option for a voter to sign an affidavit attesting to their identity in place of a photo ID. The amendment would establish a state-funded hardship program that would be available to those unable to pay for a photo ID.

Violations of the amendment would be subject to a $1,000 fine or up to five years in prison.

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