Michigan's solicitor general is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reject an emergency bid by a citizen-voting group to place a proof-of-citizenship amendment on the November ballot, a last-ditch fight over hundreds of thousands of signatures and a looming deadline.
Americans for Citizen Voting Michigan filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court after state officials rejected its ballot initiative and the Michigan Supreme Court failed to act in time. The group collected more than 700,000 signatures, roughly 60 percent above the 446,198 required, for a proposed constitutional amendment that would require voters to prove U.S. citizenship. But the Michigan Board of State Canvassers deadlocked 2-2 along party lines, blocking the measure after a sample review of 1,000 signatures found the petition fell just three valid signatures short of the threshold.
Three signatures. Out of more than 700,000 submitted. That margin, and the partisan split on the board, is now at the center of a federal court fight with a Friday deadline to finalize Michigan's November ballots.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh directed Michigan officials to respond by noon Wednesday to ACVM's emergency application, docketed as No. 26A275. Michigan Solicitor General Ann Sherman filed the state's opposition the same day, calling the petition "highly unusual" and arguing that the Supreme Court should not be the first court to review the group's claims.
Sherman wrote that ACVM's emergency application is "sorely lacking in factual bases and legal substance" and that the dispute belongs in state courts, not the nation's highest.
"The Court should decline to put its thumb on the scale in this manner, particularly in the case of a state administrative proceeding where a state court can provide more fulsome and comprehensive review."
That framing, treat this as a routine state administrative matter, sidesteps the group's core complaint: that Michigan officials rejected valid signatures, ignored sworn affidavits they themselves had requested, and ran out the clock until it was nearly too late to fix anything.
In its filing, ACVM laid out a pointed sequence of events. The Michigan Bureau of Elections rejected the petition based on its sample review. ACVM then obtained sworn affidavits from nine Michigan voters confirming they had signed the petition, affidavits the Bureau itself had directed the group to procure. The Bureau rejected those too, claiming the signatures did not match the state's internal database.
ACVM's petition put it bluntly:
"It cannot be the case that government officials demand proof of someone's identity, receive it, and then refuse to recognize that proof because those officials have a secret historical database that no one else is allowed to review or because those same officials were delinquent in their processes and arbitrary in their rules."
The group also accused the Board of State Canvassers of waiting more than five months to reject the petition, leaving almost no time to resolve the dispute before ballot finalization. That delay is not a minor procedural detail. It is the reason the case landed on the Supreme Court's emergency docket instead of moving through normal state court channels, the very channels Michigan's solicitor general now says should handle it.
The voter-integrity debate playing out in Michigan mirrors a broader national conflict. Congress has wrestled with the same question at the federal level, where the House recently passed a defense bill with a voter ID measure attached by just four votes.
Michigan Republicans did not hold back about what happened at the Board of State Canvassers. John James, the Republican nominee for governor, tied the rejection directly to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.
"Jocelyn Benson is against voter ID, and her office is trying to keep this question off the ballot, with her staff rejecting signatures even from voters who later submitted notarized affidavits swearing they signed the Citizen Only Voting Petition."
Anthony Forlini, a Republican candidate for Michigan secretary of state, described the board's behavior as partisan gamesmanship: "The four-member board is playing party politics... it gives a feel that the bureau is advocating for policies that will best fit their election agendas."
Those accusations gain weight when you look at the numbers. More than 700,000 Michigan residents signed the petition. The required threshold was 446,198. The board's sample review found the petition fell short by three valid signatures, a margin so thin it invites scrutiny of the sampling method itself, especially when sworn affidavits from actual signers were dismissed.
The question of who gets to vote, and how states verify eligibility, has drawn federal enforcement action in recent months. The DOJ arrested a Honduran national on voter fraud charges in California earlier this year, part of a broader crackdown on noncitizen voting.
Sherman's central argument is jurisdictional. She contends the Supreme Court should not act as a first-instance reviewer of what is fundamentally a state administrative dispute. On paper, that is a defensible legal position. In practice, it collides with the timeline Michigan officials themselves created.
ACVM first sought emergency relief from the Michigan Supreme Court. The state high court did not act. With the ballot finalization deadline on Friday and no state court remedy available, the group went to the U.S. Supreme Court, the only institution with the authority and the speed to intervene before the window closed.
Michigan officials now ask the justices to stay out, arguing state courts can provide "more fulsome and comprehensive review." But the state's own five-month delay in rejecting the petition and the Michigan Supreme Court's inaction are what eliminated the possibility of that review happening in time. Telling a petitioner to use state courts after the state has run out the clock is not a procedural argument. It is a result.
Separate cases involving noncitizen participation in elections have surfaced across the country. A Chinese national was charged with voter fraud after casting a ballot in the 2024 presidential election, underscoring the gaps in verification systems that ballot measures like Michigan's aim to close.
ACVM framed the stakes in its filing: if the petition stays off the ballot, "Michigan voters will never have a chance to vote on the petition, regardless of whether it should or should not have been placed on the ballot." That is not a claim about the merits of proof-of-citizenship voting. It is a claim about whether voters get to decide at all.
The Supreme Court had not ruled as of the filing of Michigan's response. The Friday deadline for finalizing November ballots compresses whatever deliberation the justices undertake into a matter of days. The court has shown a willingness to act on emergency election-related applications in recent months, it lifted a block on a Trump executive order concerning mail-in ballots and allowed White House construction to proceed, both on expedited timelines.
Whether the justices view ACVM's petition as a genuine constitutional claim or a late-arriving state dispute will likely determine whether more than 700,000 Michigan signers see their effort reach the ballot. The Supreme Court's recent birthright citizenship ruling revealed deep divisions among the justices on questions where citizenship, voting, and constitutional interpretation intersect, divisions that could surface again here.
At the federal level, legislative efforts to require proof of citizenship for voting have stalled repeatedly. The Senate sidelined the SAVE America Act for five weeks through a recess deal, leaving the issue unresolved in Congress even as states like Michigan fight over it in court.
More than 700,000 Michigan residents signed a petition asking to vote on whether voters should prove they are citizens. State officials ran the clock, rejected sworn proof, and now ask the Supreme Court to look away. If that process is working as intended, it is working for the officials, not the voters.
