WASHINGTON — A battle over whether Michigan voters should get the chance to decide a proposed constitutional amendment requiring proof of U.S. citizenship for voting has reached the U.S. Supreme Court, just days before the state must finalize its November ballot.
Americans for Citizen Voting–Michigan filed an emergency application with the nation’s highest court on Aug. 31, asking the justices to order Michigan election officials to place its proposed constitutional amendment on the 2026 ballot while litigation over the petition continues.
The case, Americans for Citizen Voting–Michigan v. Michigan Board of State Canvassers, has been docketed at the Supreme Court as No. 26A275, with the emergency application submitted to Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who handles emergency matters arising from the Sixth Circuit.
At stake is not yet whether Michigan should require proof of citizenship to vote. The immediate fight is much narrower: Did the petition campaign collect enough legally valid signatures to put the question before Michigan voters?
More Than 700,000 Signatures Submitted
Americans for Citizen Voting submitted 709,841 signatures supporting the proposed constitutional amendment.
That appears comfortably above Michigan's requirement of 446,198 valid signatures for a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment.
But Michigan does not simply count the number of signatures submitted. Election officials use a statistical sampling process to determine whether a petition contains enough valid signatures.
The Michigan Bureau of Elections examined a random sample of 1,000 signatures.
Because the campaign submitted 709,841 signatures, election officials calculated that at least 629 of the 1,000 sampled signatures needed to be valid for the petition to qualify for certification.
After challenges and reviews were completed, Bureau of Elections staff determined that only 612 signatures were valid — a 61.2% validity rate.
The required validity rate was approximately 62.9%.
That relatively small statistical difference was enough to keep the proposal from Michigan's ballot.
According to the state's report, sampled signatures were rejected for several reasons, including voters whose signatures did not sufficiently match records, people who were not registered in the city or township they listed, problems with dates, and incomplete or incorrect municipality information.
What the Proposed Amendment Would Do
The proposal goes considerably further than simply adding the words "proof of citizenship" to Michigan election law.
According to the Michigan Board of State Canvassers' description, the amendment would create a statewide citizenship-verification system for voters.
It would require citizenship verification through government databases, submission of documents or provisional voting.
Documents used to establish citizenship could include a birth certificate, passport or other qualifying records.
The proposal would also require election officials to separately track eligibility for federal, state and local elections and establish procedures for removing people determined to be noncitizens after notice and an opportunity to challenge that determination.
Beginning in November 2027, ballots cast by voters whose citizenship remained unverified generally could not be counted unless the voter provided the necessary documentation within six days after the election.
The proposal would also make significant changes to Michigan's voter-identification system. It would eliminate the current affidavit alternative for voters who arrive at the polls without photo identification and establish additional identification requirements for absentee voting.
That means Michigan voters would be deciding on a substantial restructuring of voter eligibility verification — not merely a symbolic declaration that voters must be citizens.
Petition Group Says Michigan Voters Are Being Denied Their Voice
Americans for Citizen Voting argues that keeping the proposal off the ballot would create irreparable harm because there would be no practical way to restore the lost opportunity after the election.
The organization first sought relief from the Michigan Supreme Court before turning to Washington.
Its emergency Supreme Court application contends that, because Michigan's ballot-printing deadline is approaching, ordinary litigation could move too slowly to provide meaningful relief.
The organization wants the U.S. Supreme Court to order the amendment onto the ballot while the courts continue deciding whether Michigan officials properly rejected enough signatures to prevent certification.
The application asks the justices to act by Sept. 3, because Michigan officials face a deadline shortly afterward for finalizing the ballot.
The group's basic argument is straightforward: if the proposal is excluded now and the campaign later wins its case, the victory will come too late.
If the amendment is printed on the ballot and the organization ultimately loses its legal challenge, however, courts could potentially prevent the results from taking effect.
Michigan election officials, on the other hand, have relied on the state's established petition-review process and the results of the statistical sample.
That produces the central legal question now confronting the courts: Should judges intervene before the election when state election officials have determined that a petition statistically failed to produce enough valid signatures?
The Numbers Make This Case Particularly Significant
One reason this dispute is likely to attract attention is how close the petition came to clearing Michigan's statistical threshold.
The campaign needed 629 valid signatures within the 1,000-signature sample.
Election staff ultimately counted 612.
That is a difference of only 17 sampled signatures.
Yet because those 1,000 signatures are used to estimate the validity of more than 700,000 submitted signatures, those 17 signatures have enormous consequences.
Americans for Citizen Voting argues that disputed signature determinations therefore deserve intensive scrutiny.
Michigan election officials maintain that the statistical sampling process is established under state election procedures and must be applied consistently.
The Supreme Court Is Being Asked to Move Quickly
Emergency election cases can put the Supreme Court in a difficult position.
Courts generally prefer legal disputes to move through lower courts first, allowing judges to develop a factual record and consider the competing legal arguments.
Election deadlines do not always allow that luxury.
Ballots must be approved, printed and distributed. Overseas and military ballots have deadlines of their own. At some point, election administration becomes extremely difficult to change without risking confusion.
Americans for Citizen Voting argues that Michigan officials contributed to that emergency by taking months to reach a final decision on its petitions.
The campaign filed its petitions in March, while the Board's major certification proceedings occurred in August.
The Supreme Court's docket confirms that the emergency application was formally filed Aug. 31 and referred to Justice Kavanaugh.
Citizenship and Voting Have Become a Major National Issue
Only U.S. citizens may legally vote in federal elections.
The political and legal dispute centers largely on how states should verify citizenship and what documentation voters should be required to produce.
Supporters of proof-of-citizenship laws argue that citizenship is one of the fundamental qualifications for voting and that governments should verify it rather than relying primarily on voter attestations and existing registration systems.
Opponents argue that documentary requirements can prevent otherwise eligible citizens from voting, particularly people who do not readily possess passports, birth certificates or other qualifying documents.
Those competing arguments are already generating litigation around the country.
The Supreme Court is separately expected to confront questions surrounding Arizona's proof-of-citizenship requirements for federal elections, making the Michigan dispute part of a much broader national legal battle over how voter citizenship should be verified.
Michigan Voters May Never Reach the Underlying Question
Perhaps the most unusual aspect of the Michigan case is that hundreds of thousands of residents signed petitions seeking a public vote, yet Michigan voters may never decide whether they actually support the proposal.
That distinction matters.
Signing a petition does not necessarily mean supporting the amendment itself. It means supporting placing the question before voters.
Likewise, the Supreme Court is not presently being asked to decide whether Michigan should enact the citizenship requirements.
The immediate dispute concerns ballot access, petition validity and whether judicial intervention is justified before election deadlines make further relief practically impossible.
The Court could grant emergency relief, deny it, or allow proceedings in Michigan's courts to continue.
Whatever happens, the case highlights just how consequential petition-signature rules can be.
Americans for Citizen Voting collected more than 700,000 signatures, roughly 263,000 more than Michigan's minimum requirement.
Yet after statistical sampling, the initiative's future may effectively come down to 17 signatures out of 1,000 examined.
And now the final decision over whether Michigan voters even get to see the question on their ballots could rest with nine justices in Washington.
I verified the 709,841 submitted signatures, the 446,198-signature requirement, the 629-of-1,000 certification threshold, the state's 612-valid-signature finding, and the Aug. 31 Supreme Court filing against Michigan and Supreme Court records.
