LANSING — Likely Michigan voters voiced support for two proposals — one calling for a constitutional convention and another banning some companies from political spending — that will be posed to them on the November ballot in a recent statewide poll.
Those surveyed for The Detroit News-WDIV-TV (Channel 4) poll indicated they would vote yes on Proposal 1, a question posed every 16 years to hold a constitutional convention, by a margin of 47% to 31%. About 22% of those surveyed remained undecided.
Support was stronger for a second proposal, a ballot question that would block state-regulated and state-contracted companies from making political contributions. The Michiganders for Money out of Politics proposal was supported 71.5% to 16%, according to the poll. Nearly 13% remained undecided.
The poll was conducted by Lansing-based Glengariff Group between Aug. 31 and Sept. 3. The poll included 600 likely general election voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.
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The bipartisan support for the Michiganders for Money out of Politics proposal, on the other hand, shows momentum in favor of the statutory change.
“This is a really popular proposal in that it is bipartisan,” Czuba said. “Voters on all sides of the political aisle support this by big, deep margins. This reminds me of some of the numbers we saw for personal disclosure reform.”
The 2022 proposal requiring personal financial disclosures for certain elected officials and candidates and reworking state House and Senate term limits passed 66% to 34%.
If approved by voters in November, the initiative would amend the state’s campaign finance law to prohibit contributions from monopoly utilities and companies with state government contracts worth more than $250,000. Additionally, the initiative would ban entities and people connected to utilities and large government contractors from giving to political campaigns in Michigan.
The initiative also attempts to expand transparency around so-called dark money groups. Under current law, only groups that run ads expressly telling people how to vote have to report their donors. The initiative would expand the disclosure requirements to ads that clearly identify candidates, which would encompass those ads run by dark money groups that do not usually disclose their donors.
“This is very effective wording,” Czuba said of the ballot language for the Michiganders for Money out of Politics proposal. “They found some villains that people don’t like. And that’s motivating people.
“To defeat this,” he added, “it would require a monumental amount of money and I don’t know who has that.”