Is now the right time for Michigan to call a constitutional convention? | Public Comment

Michigan Elections

Michigan’s Constitution automatically requires voters to consider a constitutional convention every 16 years. Proposal 2026-01 will therefore appear on the November 3 ballot and ask whether elected delegates should be called to undertake a general revision of the 1963 Constitution. If voters approve it, delegates would be elected and the convention would convene in Lansing in 2027; any proposed replacement constitution would still require voter ratification. If voters reject the convention, the automatic question returns in 2042. Michigan voters rejected the same periodic call in 1978, 1994 and 2010. Michigan has changed substantially since 1963, but a constitutional convention opens the whole governing framework rather than one issue at a time. That makes the opportunity unusually powerful and unusually hard to control.

Is now the right time for Michigan to call a constitutional convention?

Overall results

1

59% support · excluded by 4%

7

A convention adds delegate elections, negotiations and a later ratification campaign before any change takes effect. Targeted amendments can separate popular reforms from unrelated constitutional disputes.

7

Michigan already has a mechanism for targeted amendments. Voters can address genuine defects one at a time without opening unrelated constitutional protections and institutions to simultaneous bargaining.

2

53% support · excluded by 6%

7

Michigan should not treat a document written more than six decades ago as untouchable. Elect delegates, put the whole structure on the table and let voters judge the result.

7

Piecemeal amendments can solve isolated problems but cannot easily reconcile provisions that interact across budgeting, local government, elections and institutional authority. A convention can examine the system as a whole.

3

38% support

7

Constitutional stability limits political actors as much as it limits policy change. Rewriting basic rules because an automatic question appears on the ballot is not itself a reason to expand government redesign.

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