Over 562K Signatures Filed For Proposal To Ban Campaign Spending By Utilities, State Contractors

Michigan Advance

May 27, 2026

Leaders and volunteers from the Michiganders for Money Out of Politics ballot petition campaign gathered outside the Michigan Bureau of Elections Wednesday to turn in over 562,000 signatures to put a proposal on the November ballot to ban utility companies and government contractors from making campaign contributions.

“This systemic corruption that we’re fighting is a bipartisan problem that today we meet with a nonpartisan solution, and the signatures that we turn in today represent the will of 562,068 Michigan voters,” Sean McBrearty, an environmental activist who serves as a co-chair of Michiganders for Money Out of Politics, said during a press conference hosted just before officially submitting the petitions.

Both McBrearty and Christy McGillivray, the other co-chair of the initiative and the executive director of Voters Not Politicians, emphasized that this is not a partisan question — that volunteer signature-gatherers ranged in political position from MAGA Republicans to Democratic Socialists.

“Here’s the truth,” McGillivray said. “The corrupting influence of money has kept our state government from serving us. Politicians have been serving their mega donors instead of voters.”

Ballot initiatives seeking to initiate a change to state statute, like this one, must submit at least 356,958 valid signatures — eight percent of the votes cast for governor in 2022 — in order to qualify for the November ballot.

Utility giants DTE and Consumers Energy, as well as major health insurer and government contractor Blue Cross Blue Shield, were repeatedly brought up as among the most prominent campaign contributors who the initiative is seeking to block from exerting disproportionate influence in state government.

“80% of our Legislature took money from utility companies, and that means they have way too much influence over what happened in Lansing,” said Elouise Sirleaf, a community organizer with MI United, a part of the initiative’s steering committee. “That is why today we are here to say on behalf of the hundreds of thousands who signed a petition that it’s time to start holding DTE, Consumers Energy and Blue Cross Blue Shield accountable.”

Organizers turned in signatures at the same time that many of Lansing’s biggest government and business power players are gathered on Mackinac Island at the annual Mackinac Policy Conference — which has been criticized by some, including Attorney General Dana Nessel, as a high-dollar, exclusive event separated from the needs and wants of everyday Michigan residents.

“We are hosting this today because the people of Michigan have come together to say no to things like what’s happening at the Mackinac conference, like what happens at the Mackinac Conference every year, where they build an exclusive retreat for our lawmakers to be wined and dined by the corporate lobbyists who are buying the system,” McBrearty said.

The ballot initiative has faced criticism for itself taking money from out-of-state and dark-money organizations that do not have to disclose their donors, including the Working Families Organization of New York, All Hands on Deck Network of Massachusetts and the Green Advocacy Project of Washington D.C.

But leaders of the movement defended that decision, with McBrearty telling reporters, “We are playing by the rules of the system that is set up right now meticulously, while we work to change it, and frankly, we’ll take money from the devil himself to get DTE to stop raising our rates and then spending the money to buy the politicians, so they can keep raising our rates.”

McGillivray added that, in terms of finances, this is a “bare-bones campaign” — though McBrearty was quick to note that it is not bare-bones in terms of volunteer strength — and challenged critics to compare the money raised for the initiative, around $2.2 million in 2026, to what their opponents have spent and raised.

For Dr. Aisha Harris, a Flint-based physician and member of the Committee to Protect Health Care, another part of the initiative’s steering committee, the initiative is about “restoring trust and accountability in our government.”

She shared stories of patients who have waited too long to see a doctor because they could not afford medical bills, continuing, “Let’s put an end to the billionaire health insurance companies controlling what laws our state legislators do and do not pass, and give voice back to patients and everyday Michiganders. We, as constituents, are the ones who elected these officials, and that they are supposed to be serving, not greedy corporations who are only concerned about their bottom line.”

The Michigan Advance, a hard-hitting, nonprofit news site, covers politics and policy across the state of Michigan through in-depth stories, blog posts, and social media updates, as well as top-notch progressive commentary. The Advance is part of States Newsroom, a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit supported by grants and a coalition of donors and readers.