Petition to create LGBTQ protections in Michigan civil rights law seems brief on signatures

By Jason Wilson Last updated Jul 9, 2021

A new report from the state electoral bureau found that a petition for a nomination to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity lacks enough signatures to move forward.

Fair and Equal Michigan needs 340,047 valid signatures to be successful, but checking a random sample of signatures suggests the effort is missing out. The Board of State Canvassers will meet in Lansing on Tuesday, July 13th to consider a recommendation not to certify the petition.

Supporters of the petition hoped to provide protection for the LGBTQ community under the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, height, weight, marital or marital status. The Michigan Supreme Court recently announced that it would take a lawsuit asking whether the applicable law covers discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

The group’s goal was to get the issue before voters when they voted in November 2022, or lawmakers could have bypassed the election and enacted it as law.

Trevor Thomas, co-chair of Fair and Equal, was optimistic that the petition had enough valid signatures during an interview Thursday before the election office published his recommendation. Josh Hovey, a spokesman for Fair and Equal Michigan, said the effort was still ongoing.

“The polling station has discarded thousands of valid signatures and we will fight for every valid signature so that no voters are disenfranchised,” Hovey said in a statement. “Since 2005, the State Department has failed to enact rules under the mandate of the Legislature to set standards for determining the validity of petition signatures. For this reason, any decision made by any department staff member is contrary to the requirements of the Michigan Electoral Act. “

A total of 468,830 signatures were submitted in October 2020. Of these, 23,530 were discarded during an initial review.

The polling station checked a random sample of 502 signatures and found that only 337 were valid, which is below a threshold of 398 signatures for confirming the petition and a threshold of 369 signatures for taking a second sample.

Based on the sample result, the Office estimated only 298,943 of the 340,047 required signatures to be valid.

Most of the signatures have been invalidated due to the signatory’s voter registration status. Other problems were address errors and mismatched signatures.