Voting, payday lending ballot drives advance in Michigan

DELTA TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — Ballot drives to expand voting options, restrict payday loans and overhaul Michigan's citizens initiative process cleared steps before the state elections board Friday, enabling organizers to start collecting hundreds of thousands of signatures to qualify for the 2022 ballot.

The canvassers approved summaries to appear atop five petitions that will be circulated to the public.

Promote the Vote wants to create more than a week of early voting, let all voters request an absentee ballot for future elections and require prepaid postage on return envelopes. Its constitutional amendment — proposed months after Republicans launched a veto-proof initiative they contend would improve election integrity but which Democrats say would curtail voting — also would prohibit attempts to “unreasonably” burden the right to vote and enshrine the board's duty to certify results after Donald Trump’s unprecedented attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

Michiganders for Fair Lending hopes to slash interest rates payday lenders charge and that have to be repaid within two weeks. The ballot committee, like Promote the Vote, appears to have financial support needed to disseminate petitions broadly.

Also advancing were two proposed constitutional amendments backed by MI Right to Vote. One has similarities to the Promote the Vote measure. The other would allow more time to gather signatures for ballot drives, allow referendums on laws that spend money and eliminate the ability of the Legislature to pass initiated bills without the governor's signature. Instead, initiatives would go to voters.

Canvassers also OK'd the summary of a petition to decriminalize the production and possession of psychedelic mushrooms.

All told, canvassers have approved summaries for a dozen...