DETROIT – On Monday, the former chairmen of the Democrat and Republican parties in Michigan announced their support for a new ballot initiative that would change things in a big way.
It would make this a winner take all state when it comes to our electoral votes. So what does that mean?
Currently, when a candidate wins Michigan all the electoral votes go to that person.
The proposal being pushed would change that. It would mean Michigan’s 16 electoral votes go to the winner of the national popular vote, not necessarily who actually wins the state.
The last presidential cycle saw Donald Trump and Joe Biden going at one another until the bitter end in this state. Michigan was up for grabs.
And a week didn’t go by without either of the candidates themselves or their top allies rolling through here.
But there have been plenty of years where this state was not in play and all we saw from the campaigns were tumble weeds.
“You could be a battleground state one day and the very next day not be a battleground state. And that has both a similar impact with Democrats and Republicans depending on who is winning and losing and what happens until this proposal is that, that would never happen if we had a national popular vote. You could not afford to walk away from 10 million people in Michigan and have a five percent, two percent and even one percent drop in presidential election turnouts,” said Saul Anuzis, former Michigan GOP chairman.
The pitch from the former chairs of both parties here is that campaigns would be forced to play here, if Michigan adopted a winner take all electoral model.
Now to bring that to either a vote in this state legislature or a vote of the electorate will require the group to come up with more than 300,000 petition signatures.
The idea has been kicked around in the state legislature in previous years, but never went anywhere.