LANSING, Mich. — Likely Michigan voters voiced support for two proposals — one calling for a constitutional convention and another banning some companies from political spending — that will be posed to them on the November ballot in a recent statewide poll. Those surveyed for The Detroit News-WDIV-TV (Channel 4) poll indicated they would vote yes on Proposal 1, a question posed every 16 years ...

Supporters rally in Lansing, Mich., on May 27, 2026, for the "Money Out of Politics" ballot question, which received overwhelming support in a Detroit News- WDIV-TV poll of 600 likely Michigan voters.

Craig Mauger/The Detroit News/TNS

LANSING, Mich. — Likely Michigan voters voiced support for two proposals — one calling for a constitutional convention and another banning some companies from political spending — that will be posed to them on the November ballot in a recent statewide poll.

Those surveyed for The Detroit News-WDIV-TV (Channel 4) poll indicated they would vote yes on Proposal 1, a question posed every 16 years to hold a constitutional convention, by a margin of 47% to 31%. About 22% of those surveyed remained undecided.

Support was stronger for a second proposal, a ballot question that would block state-regulated and state-contracted companies from making political contributions. The Michiganders for Money out of Politics proposal was supported 71.5% to 16%, according to the poll. Nearly 13% remained undecided.

The poll was conducted by Lansing-based Glengariff Group between Aug. 31 and Sept. 3. The poll included 600 likely general election voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.

Though the "yes" vote was the leading answer on the question of a constitutional convention, pollster Richard Czuba cautioned that it is difficult for a ballot question to succeed if it is polling below 50% at this stage of the election cycle.

"When you look at these ballot proposals, they should be in the upper 50s to sustain the attacks we know are going to come for them," Czuba said.

"There’s nobody advocating for it," he said of the constitutional convention question. "There are a lot of people advocating against it, on both sides of the aisle.”

The question automatically appears on the ballot every 16 years, proposing a convention where delegates would reopen and, potentially, propose rewrites to the 1963 Constitution. Since the 1963 Constitution was adopted, the question has failed every time it's appeared on the ballot; in 2010, 67% of voters rejected it.

The polling numbers so far, Czuba said, indicate the chances of such a convention being called are low.

"There’s a lot of people to move," Czuba said. "The fact that it's not positioned well at the start tells me this, like all Con-Cons, faces a very difficult path.”

The bipartisan support for the Michiganders for Money out of Politics proposal, on the other hand, shows momentum in favor of the statutory change.

"This is a really popular proposal in that it is bipartisan," Czuba said. "Voters on all sides of the political aisle support this by big, deep margins. This reminds me of some of the numbers we saw for personal disclosure reform.”

The 2022 proposal requiring personal financial disclosures for certain elected officials and candidates and reworking state House and Senate term limits passed 66% to 34%.

If approved by voters in November, the initiative would amend the state's campaign finance law to prohibit contributions from monopoly utilities and companies with state government contracts worth more than $250,000. Additionally, the initiative would ban entities and people connected to utilities and large government contractors from giving to political campaigns in Michigan.

The initiative also attempts to expand transparency around so-called dark money groups. Under current law, only groups that run ads expressly telling people how to vote have to report their donors. The initiative would expand the disclosure requirements to ads that clearly identify candidates, which would encompass those ads run by dark money groups that do not usually disclose their donors.

"This is very effective wording," Czuba said of the ballot language for the Michiganders for Money out of Politics proposal. "They found some villains that people don’t like. And that’s motivating people.

"To defeat this," he added, "it would require a monumental amount of money and I don’t know who has that.”

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