Rank MI Vote

Background

Rank MI Vote is a campaign to bring ranked choice voting to Michigan. It was unsuccessful in its efforts to gather enough signatures to place a constitutional amendment on the 2026 statewide ballot, but expressed plans to try again for the 2028 election as of December 2025. ^{3 2}

Its proposed constitutional amendment would require ranked choice voting for elections for federal offices and the statewide positions of governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and secretary of state.  ² It would also allow local jurisdictions to implement ranked choice voting in local elections and would have moved the state’s traditional August primary to June in even-year elections. ²

Rank MI Vote’s leaders are not professional campaign operatives, and it is unusual in its reliance on volunteer rather than paid signature gatherers. ⁴ In 2025, executive director Pat Zabawa claimed to have had more than 2,500 volunteers collecting signatures. ⁴

That reliance on volunteers hamstrung its efforts to get its proposal placed on Michigan’s 2026 statewide ballot.  ⁴ In December 2025, Rank MI Vote’s leaders announced that they were suspending the 2025 ballot campaign after reports that they were more than 200,000 signatures short of the statutory requirement to gather 446,198 valid signatures in a 180-day window.  ^{5  4}

Opposition

In October 2025, the Michigan Association of County Clerks unanimously approved a resolution opposing Rank MI Vote’s ballot proposal. ⁶ While the bipartisan organization normally does not take positions on ballot measures, its members were concerned about the proposed new voting system causing “inconsistency, voter confusion, and voter fatigue.”  ⁶

Financials

As of returns publicly available as of January 2026, Rank MI Vote has filed an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Form 990-N e-postcard return reporting less than $50,000 in gross receipts in each year since 2019. ⁷

Michigan’s campaign finance records show a $100,000 donation by ranked choice voting advocate Doug Robbins in December 2024. ⁸ Robbins, a retired oil company geologist, moved to Michigan from Alaska in 2023 after being involved in that state’s adoption of ranked choice voting. ⁹