Michigan

Search by jurisdiction: county
Soft matching: yes
Signing dates: no sandwiching allowed, year not required
Transcribing: allowed for city and date only

Circulator Declarations

The shorthand is the

  1. first letter of the first name
  2. first letter of last name
  3. first digit of house number
  4. first letter of street name
  5. first letter of city
  6. first letter of state
  7. full 5-digit zip code

Check the box if this box on the petition is checked.

Check the box if the circulator has a Michigan address.

Check the box if the voter signed and enter the signing date.

Signatures

Fixable Deficiencies

Missing or mismatched city is a fixable deficiency. For that reason, you will still search for the voter if it is -c. If you can hard match the voter, tag -c#. If you cannot match the voter or there are unfixable deficiencies, simply tag 0. There is no such thing as soft matching a wrong city in Michigan, because the city is part of the filter you have to do in order to soft match in Michigan. It's not something to occupy your mind while working; it's simply not possible.

Every voter in Michigan has a postal city and a municipality that may or may not be the same name. The city written on the petition must exactly match either the postal city (not in brackets) or the municipality (in brackets).

  1. Benton ≠ Benton Harbor
  2. East Lansing ≠ Lansing
  3. Benton = Benton Township

Most City Abbreviations Not Allowed

Directions and common words in the city or municipality name can be abbreviated such as E for East, Mt for Mount, Pk for Park, and Pt for Point. However, the distinct part of the city name such as Benton, Bloomfield, Orion, or Lansing cannot be abbreviated unless it's shown in parentheses in the search results or listed in the spreadsheet below.

Right-click on this limited list of permitted MI abbreviations.xlsx and Save As.

Any forbidden abbreviations are fixable deficiencies, same as a missing or mismatched city, so use -c# if you find the voter or simply 0 if not.

Special Soft Match Criteria

For the Ryan D Cushman nomination under the Marquette job, soft matching requires a unique name within the county, not within the municipality like most Michigan petitions. In other words, default soft matching. NEITHER THE POSTAL CITY NOR THE MUNICIPALITY NEED TO MATCH ON A SOFT MATCH.

For name uniqueness, the name must be unique per city, not per county. This actually makes it easier by reducing the number of results. After a last name/first name smart search, type a single space and a few letters of the city to filter results (e.g. smi joh det for John Smith in Detroit). If the name is unique to the specific city, it's a soft match. This is true even if there are results from both a city and a township of the same name. If no locality is written, the signature cannot be a soft match based on name uniqueness.