Healthcare, casino gambling petitions come up short

Health care, casino measures fail to get enough signatures

Karen Bouffard / Detroit News Lansing Bureau

Lansing -- Federal health care opponents rebounded Tuesday from a failed ballot initiative with a proposed Michigan Healthcare Freedom Act to be introduced in the Legislature this month.

The proposed act asserting Michiganians' right to opt out of a federal health care plan was announced by Rep. Tom McMillin, R-Rochester Hills, and Sen. Wayne Kuipers, R-Holland, as part of a press conference by organizers of the drive to get the issue on the November ballot.

The grassroots group needed more than 380,000 petition signatures to allow voters in November to decide if Michigan residents should be allowed to opt out of the federal health care overhaul, but they collected less than half that number by Monday's 5 p.m. deadline.

Groups aiming to expand casino gambling in Michigan also didn't gather enough voter signatures to make the ballot. That means there will be only two questions on the November ballot:

• Whether there should be a convention to draft a revision of the state Constitution, which was last rewritten in 1962. That question is automatically asked of voters every 16 years.

• Whether to approve a constitutional amendment barring felons convicted of breaching the public trust from serving in elected office or in a state policy-making position for 20 years after being found guilty.

Wendy Day, president of Common Sense in Government, a Howell-based group that organized the anti-health care bill petition drive, said opposition to national health care is growing in Michigan.

"This is just one step in the process," Day told volunteers on the Capitol steps. "It's just one battle in a war we have to win."

Kuipers and McMillin brandished copies of the act, which would block the federal government from restricting Michiganians' right to choose private health care coverage and from imposing penalties on those who don't participate in any plan.

Day said the three-month window between passage of the federal legislation and Monday's 5 p.m. deadline for turning in signatures did not leave enough time to collect needed signatures.

"We think we got between 145,000 and 185,000 signatures, somewhere in that range," Day said. "The average petition drive costs $1.5 million and we ended up spending about 2 percent of that and got half the number (of signatures) we needed.

"We didn't make it (the number we needed), but it's a pretty amazing accomplishment with all our volunteers."

kbouffard@detnews.com (517) 371-3660