A state elections board says it’s OK for two more petition drives to start collecting signatures to get on the November ballot.
The Board of State Canvassers gave the go-ahead to a petition drive to make being the Michigan Legislature part-time. The proposed amendment to the state constitution would limit regular sessions of the Legislature to no more than 60 days.
“It requires the Legislature, Michigan’s legislature, just like is done in a vast number of other states, to get their work done in a specific period of time and to spend more time with their constituents,” said Matt Davis, an attorney for the Committee to Restore Michigan’s Part-time Legislature.
Another petition was approved to make it easier to run petition drives to put questions on the ballot. Put Citizens in Charge wants to make it easier to collect petition signatures and tougher to knock a question off the ballot for technical violations. Among other things, it wants to preempt efforts to outlaw paying circulators by the signature, and allow out-of-state petition circulators.
Both ballot campaigns have until July 7 to collect almost 323,000 signatures.
There are already two questions approved for the November ballot that deal with wolf hunting and local business taxes.
