Advocacy News – Dec. 22, 2025
What’s new: Rank MI Vote has announced they are pausing their signature gathering campaign to get a ranked choice voting proposal on the November 2026 ballot.
Why it matters: Rank MI Vote was one of six groups in the field trying to collect sufficient signatures to qualify for the November 2026 general election ballot. Their goal: to fundamentally change how Michiganders choose many of their elected officials.
- Ranked choice voting allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. Initially, only voters’ top choice is counted, but if no candidate has an immediate majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. All the voters who chose the eliminated candidate then have their second-place votes distributed to the remaining candidates. The process repeats until one candidate has more than 50% of the vote.
Zooming out: The group needed to collect 446,198 voter signatures but was reportedly short 200,000 as of early December. Gongwer reported Dec. 18 that Executive Director Pat Zabawa said the decision to pause will allow the group to refocus on building momentum toward a future statewide victory for ranked choice voting in Michigan.
- Zabawa said all options remain on the table and emphasized the organization’s continued commitment to the issue, noting the involvement of more than 2,500 volunteers and hundreds of thousands of conversations with voters.
It remains to be seen whether other groups circulating petitions for the November 2026 election will follow suit in the coming weeks.
For questions, contact Wendy Block.