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Home HOME-0009 · Ballot item · Exhibit MC-0009 · Exhibit version 1.0 draft · Home version 1.0
Jurisdiction and deciding body: Michigan; the Michigan electorate, by a majority of the electors voting on the question itself
Instrument: Proposal 2026-1, a proposal to convene a constitutional convention for the purpose of drafting a general revision of the State Constitution; Constitution of Michigan of 1963, Article XII, Section 3
Decision date November 3, 2026. Lifecycle stage: Decision window.
Validation: Last validated October 30, 2026. Next review: the Morning After audit points carried in the filed projections below.
Filed under: Michigan ballot questions. Entered by the Clerk. Stamped: record checked, October 30, 2026.
Michigan's constitution is more than sixty years old and has been patched together one amendment at a time until it no longer fits how the state is governed. Only a convention can take up the whole document at once and fix what the piecemeal process cannot.
Stated in its common form. This claim circulates in many wordings, and it is rephrased here so that no one person's exact words are singled out.
A convention puts everything in the constitution up for renegotiation at the same time, including rights and protections voters adopted on purpose, with no deadline on its work and a large, open ended cost that the state pays whether or not the voters accept the result.
Stated in its common form. This claim circulates in many wordings, and it is rephrased here so that no one person's exact words are singled out.
The record: a yes vote changes no word of the constitution on election night. It calls an election of 148 delegates, and nothing those delegates propose takes effect unless a majority of all of them send it to the voters and a majority of the voters approve it.
The record, in brief: Michigan's constitution requires this question to be asked every sixteen years. A yes vote starts a process that runs through two more elections and a second vote of the people before any word of the document can change. A no vote keeps the current constitution in force, keeps the amendment process that has changed it since 1963, and brings the question back on its own in 2042.
What a YES vote does: The call is approved when a majority of the electors voting on the question vote yes. Nothing in the constitution changes that night. The result is certified after the canvass set for November 23, 2026. The legislature must then pass the laws that run the delegate elections and fund the convention, because none are in place today. Voters in each House and Senate district elect 148 delegates at a partisan election held within six months of certification, by about May 22, 2027. The delegates convene in Lansing on October 5, 2027, or earlier if a law provides, and draft with no deadline on their work. Whatever they adopt by a majority of all 148 delegates is placed before the voters no less than 90 days after the convention adjourns, and it takes effect only if a majority of the voters voting on it approve.
What a NO vote does: The 1963 Constitution continues in force exactly as it is. No delegates are elected and no convention costs are incurred. Amendments can still be proposed by the legislature or by voter petition and decided one at a time, as they have been since 1963. The convention question returns on its own at the November 2042 general election.
When it takes effect: A yes vote takes effect as a process when the result is certified in November 2026. On the 1961-62 convention's ten month pattern, the earliest a revised constitution could be in force is late 2028, and only after the separate ratification vote (Inference, from the fixed dates in the record and the length of the one Michigan precedent). A no vote takes effect at once, as continuation of the current document.
Who carries it out: The Board of State Canvassers certifies the result. The legislature writes the implementing laws and appropriates the money. The voters of each district elect the delegates. The convention chooses its own officers and rules and judges its own members, and the governor fills a delegate vacancy with a resident of the same district who belongs to the same party. The voters decide the product at ratification.
What it costs or raises: There is no single official figure, and this panel does not present one as settled. The House Fiscal Agency's headline estimate is about $78.3 million in total, assuming delegate pay is raised to its inflation adjusted level and two elections add cost. The Senate Fiscal Agency's methods produce lower figures for the convention itself, from about $10.2 million with delegate pay held at the caps still written in a 1958 statute to about $47.3 million for a year on a legislature sized proxy, and its added election costs run from zero, if the required elections fall on dates already scheduled, to more than $60.9 million if three standalone elections are needed. The exhibit's Verified Record carries both agencies' methods in full.
How it can be changed later: If a convention's product is ratified, it becomes the constitution, and later change runs through the amendment process that document contains. If the product is rejected, or the call itself fails, the 1963 Constitution continues, and the legislature may also place the convention question before the voters at other times by law, ahead of the automatic 2042 return.
Projection MC-0009-P1. If the call is approved, the fixed sequence runs and the convention convenes on October 5, 2027. Evidence confidence: Verified. Projection confidence: High.
Projection MC-0009-P2. If the call is approved, the total state cost lands inside the fiscal agencies' spread. Evidence confidence: Verified. Projection confidence: Low.
What is true in the Exhibit 1: the constitution is 63 years old, it has been changed only one amendment at a time since 1963, and a convention is the only route that can revise the whole document at once.
What is true in the Exhibit 2: a convention may take up any subject in the document, nothing already in the constitution is placed beyond its reach, its work has no deadline, and its costs are paid whether or not the voters accept its product.
Last validated October 30, 2026. Filed updates: 0. Latest: none filed.
Both claims are stated in their common form. Each circulates in many wordings, in campaign material, in commentary, and in conversation, and each is rephrased here accurately and in the same way, so that no one person's exact words are singled out. The first claim holds that the 1963 Constitution is more than sixty years old, that it has been patched one amendment at a time until it no longer fits how Michigan is governed, and that only a convention can take up the whole document at once and fix what the piecemeal process cannot. The second claim holds that a convention puts everything in the constitution up for renegotiation at the same time, including rights and protections voters adopted on purpose, with no deadline on its work and a large, open ended cost that the state pays whether or not the voters accept the result. The record underneath both claims is in section 3.
The instrument's operative text, as it will appear on the ballot (reproduced in the exhibit from the House Fiscal Agency under the statement that it is the official language, and reproduced word for word by the Senate Fiscal Agency):
Proposal 2026-1 A proposal to convene a constitutional convention for the purpose of drafting a general revision of the State Constitution Shall a convention of elected delegates be convened in 2027 to draft a general revision of the State Constitution for presentation to the state's voters for their approval or rejection? [ ] YES [ ] NO
Its plain meaning: a yes vote changes no word of the constitution on election night. It calls an election of 148 delegates, one from each of the 110 House districts and each of the 38 Senate districts, and nothing those delegates propose takes effect unless a majority of all of them send it to the voters and a majority of the voters approve it. The question is decided by a majority of the electors voting on the question itself; a voter who skips the question counts neither way. The decision maker is the Michigan electorate. The decision date is November 3, 2026.
The status quo, stated as carefully as the change: the 1963 Constitution continues in force, as it has for 63 years, the longest of Michigan's four constitutions. Amendments can still be proposed by the legislature or by voter petition and decided one at a time, as every change since 1963 has been made. No delegates are elected and no convention costs are incurred, and the convention question returns on its own at the November 2042 general election.
One premise under the first claim is that the document's problems are structural, spread across its articles, so that fixing them one amendment at a time cannot reach them. A second premise is that breadth is an opportunity: one elected body, able to weigh trade offs across the whole document at once, can produce a more coherent constitution than decades of separate single question votes. One premise under the second claim is that breadth is the risk itself: provisions adopted deliberately, one question at a time, can be reopened inside a single negotiation in which no single issue receives its own vote. A second premise is that an open ended agenda and an open ended cost are the same kind of problem, a commitment made before its terms are known. Neither premise is a figure. The figures are in section 3, and the disagreement they leave open is stated in section 8.
Proposal 2026-1 A proposal to convene a constitutional convention for the purpose of drafting a general revision of the State Constitution Shall a convention of elected delegates be convened in 2027 to draft a general revision of the State Constitution for presentation to the state's voters for their approval or rejection? [ ] YES [ ] NO
The first claim holds on the document's age and on the way it has been changed. The 1963 Constitution has been in force for 63 years, longer than any Michigan constitution before it, and every change in that time has come one amendment at a time, proposed by the legislature or by voter petition and decided on its own. It holds on the dead language in the text: the Citizens Research Council's article by article review identifies provisions that are obsolete or inoperative under the United States Constitution, and they remain printed in the document until a revision or an amendment removes them. It holds on the structural point at its center, because a general revision, the whole document taken up at once, is something only a convention can attempt. The claim breaks where it treats the piecemeal record as a record of failure to change. The amendment route has changed the constitution repeatedly across six decades; the two counts of that record disagree with each other (section 3), and neither describes a process that cannot move. It also breaks where it states, as settled, that the document no longer fits how the state is governed. The neutral review in the record returns a mixed finding, some articles working as intended and others under sustained scrutiny, and the claim presents one half of that finding as the whole of it. What a convention would produce in place of the current document cannot be checked against the claim at all, because the delegates are not yet elected and no product exists.
The second claim holds on scope. The constitution places no subject off limits to a convention, and provisions that voters adopted one at a time, among them reproductive rights, pension protections, voting rules, and tax limits, could all be taken up in the same room and in the same negotiation. It holds on time: no deadline in the constitution or in any statute limits how long the convention may sit. It holds on money in one specific way: the costs in section 3 are incurred through the process itself, and they are spent whether or not the voters later adopt the product, as the record of 1866 and 1868 shows in Michigan's own history. The claim breaks where it can be heard to say that a convention could change the constitution. A convention cannot change one word on its own. A proposal leaves the convention only with the assent of a majority of all 148 delegates, with each vote recorded by name in the journal, and it takes effect only if a majority of the voters approve it at an election held no less than 90 days after the convention adjourns. The convention could also propose a narrow cleanup of obsolete provisions, or no change at all; reopening a contested provision is within its power, and so is leaving every one of them alone. The claim also presents the cost without the bounds the record names. The total is set by legislative appropriation. Delegate pay currently sits under caps written in 1958 unless the legislature raises them, and on the Senate Fiscal Agency's analysis the added election cost could be zero if the required elections fall on dates already scheduled. The range in the record is wide, and it is wide for stated reasons, which is a different thing from a cost with no terms at all.
Both claims stand on the same ground. The document is 63 years old, and it has been amended many times. A convention's scope is genuinely unlimited within federal limits, and its product genuinely cannot take effect without a second majority vote of the people. The delegates would be elected district by district, and the final decision on anything they propose would belong to the voters. The disagreement between the claims is not over any of those facts. It is over the single fact both of them cite, the breadth of a convention, read in one claim as the opportunity and in the other as the risk.
148. Michigan would elect one delegate from each of its 110 House districts and each of its 38 Senate districts. In 1961 the same formula produced 144 delegates, because there were then 34 Senate districts. The number turns an abstract question into a specific body of people, chosen by the voters of each district in an election held within six months of certification. It also carries the convention's internal threshold with it: nothing leaves the convention for the voters unless at least 75 of the 148 assent to it.
Filed projections, taken from the exhibit's annex in substance, with dual confidence labels intact.
Projection MC-0009-P1. If the call is approved, the fixed sequence runs and the convention convenes on October 5, 2027.
Projection MC-0009-P2. If the call is approved, the total state cost lands inside the fiscal agencies' spread.
Projection MC-0009-P3. If the call is rejected, constitutional change continues through the amendment process.
A projection not filed, and why (carried from the exhibit's annex). No projection is filed on the fate of any convention product. Michigan's record contains a convention product rejected outright (1868) and a convention product ratified by half of one percent (1963), and the document a 2027 convention would write does not exist. The record supports no projection in either direction, so none is printed.
The factual part is settled by the documents cited above: the question appears automatically every sixteen years because the constitutional text places it there; only the votes on the question itself are counted; a yes vote starts a process and changes nothing by itself; the convention would seat 148 delegates and convene on October 5, 2027; its product requires a majority of all delegates and then a majority of the voters; and if the question fails it returns in 2042. Those items are not debatable, because each is fixed by the text of Article XII, Section 3, by the arithmetic of the districts, or by a certified historical result. What the record cannot settle is whether the document's problems are structural or can be repaired one amendment at a time, whether the unlimited scope of a convention is an opportunity or a risk, and whether a cost somewhere inside the fiscal agencies' range is a fair price for a process whose product the voters may reject. Those items are debatable, because each asks what should be done, which value matters more, or how a trade off should be weighed. One further item belongs in the same place: what a convention would do with the contested provisions in the record, among them reproductive rights, tax limitations, pension protections, and term limits. That is debatable in a stricter sense. The delegates are not yet elected, and any statement about the product is a prediction, not a finding. The record contains none that can be verified, and this brief files none.
This brief presents the cost record as each fiscal agency's headline figures and stated assumptions; the agencies' full models are filed in the Receipt Pack, and no single total is presented as settled, because the two agencies' methods do not produce one.
Primary first. All accessed October 30, 2026. 1. Constitution of Michigan of 1963, Article XII, Section 3, full text with history, Michigan Constitutional Archive (text sourced to the Legislative Service Bureau printing of the ratified constitution). https://www.mackinac.org/constitution/1963/xii-3 2. Michigan House Fiscal Agency, "Ballot Proposal 1 of 2026: State Constitutional Convention" (analysis complete to October 7, 2026). https://house.mi.gov/HFA/PDF/Alpha/Ballot_Proposal_1_of_2026.pdf 3. Michigan Senate Fiscal Agency, "November 2026 Ballot Proposal 26-1: An Overview." https://sfa.senate.michigan.gov/Publications/BallotProps/Proposal26-1.pdf 4. Citizens Research Council of Michigan, "General Revision of the Michigan Constitution," Special Report 425-01, February 2026. https://crcmich.org/PUBLICAT/2020s/2026/rpt42501-general-revision-michigan-constitution.pdf 5. Citizens Research Council of Michigan, "A Brief Michigan Constitutional History," Special Report 425-02, February 2026. https://crcmich.org/PUBLICAT/2020s/2026/rpt42502-a-brief-michigan-constitutional-history.pdf 6. Citizens Research Council of Michigan, "Proposal 2026-01: Constitutional Revision," Special Report 425-16, September 2026. https://www.tuscolacounty.org/clerk/doc/2026-election/Proposal%202026-1%20Summary%20Review%20by%20Citizens%20Research%20Council.pdf 7. Citizens Research Council of Michigan, "Michigan Constitutional Issues" series index (16 papers, February to September 2026). https://crcmich.org/publications/2026con-con-2 8. Michigan State University Extension, "What's on the Ballot? Understanding Michigan's 2026 Ballot Proposals," October 14, 2026 (cited as co-sponsor of the public education series; no separate Extension analysis of this proposal was found). https://msu-prod.dotcmscloud.com/events/what-s-on-the-ballot-understanding-michigan-s-2026-ballot-proposals 9. Analogue sources, marked as such: "Constitutional Conventions: Insights from America's State Constitutional Tradition," Florida Law Review. https://www.floridalawreview.com/article/145829.pdf · State Politics and Policy Quarterly, supplement Table 1, "Recent Constitutional Convention Referendum Votes." https://sagejournals.cnpereading.com/storage/sage/journal/article/SLG/2019/SLG_2019_51_1/unzip/ds-slg-10.1177_0160323X19858396/Conventional_Wisdom_SLGR_Table_and_figure_supplement.pdf · New York State Constitutional Convention Clearinghouse, "Post-Mortem: New York's Nov. 7, 2017 Referendum." https://newyork.concon.info/?p=3201
No filed updates. (The exhibit's filed updates line reads: Last validated October 30, 2026. Filed updates: 0. Latest: none filed.)
You can debate what to do about the facts here. The facts are not the debate.