The House and Senate passed legislation implementing changes within Proposal 2 of 2022, which makes reforms to voting laws in Michigan.
Key Points:
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- Enacts nine consecutive days of early voting for statewide elections.
- Establishes sentencing guidelines for disclosure of early voting results.
- Creates a single application for voters to automatically receive absent voter ballots for all future elections.
- Provides for prepaid return postage on certain election documents.
- Outlines signature matching requirements for absent voter ballot documents.
- Expands permissible options for photo identification.
- Requires each municipality to have at least one accessible absent voter ballot drop box for every 15,000 registered voters.
- Increases the number of active registered voters in a single precinct from 2,999 to 5,000.
What’s Next:
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- The Senate bills were referred to the House Elections Committee for consideration.
- The House bills were referred to the Senate Elections and Ethics Committee for consideration.
- There are a few items of differences between the legislation passed by each chamber that will need to be negotiated and reconciled prior to sending the final bills to the governor for her consideration.