Kalamazoo City Commission Candidates Deadline Day

The deadline for Kalamazoo City Commission candidates to file to appear on the November 7, 2023 municipal ballot passed today at 4 p.m. Qualified candidates have until 4 p.m. on Friday to submit written requests to withdraw their names from the ballot. The final candidate list should be known by the close of business this Friday.

The Kalamazoo City Election Commission will meet on Tuesday, August 22 at 9 a.m. to approve ballots for the November 7 election. Absentee voter ballots will be available on or before Thursday, September 28.

Any candidate who missed the July 25 filing deadline can still file as a write-in candidate until Friday, October 27 at 4 p.m. Fill out a Michigan Write-In Candidate Declaration of Intent form and submit it by mail or in person to the Kalamazoo City Clerk's Office. However, it is very difficult to win any election as a write-in. The most successful local write-in campaign I know of was Stephanie Moore Bell Williams in the general election for 60th District State Representative in November 2020. Stephanie Moore received 1,980 votes, which is a massive number for a write-in candidate in a local race. However, Julie Rogers won the election with 30,037 votes (69.18% to Stephanie's 4.56%).

Rank MI Vote volunteers in front of Kalamazoo City Hall on Wednesday, May 24, 2023, before submitting 520 initiative petition sheets to the City Clerk's office. Pictured (L to R) are Justin Barney, Paul Vanryswyk, Jack Urban, Christina Dorett, Jeff Messer, and Ron Zimmerman. Photograph taken by WMU Political Science Chair John Clark.

In addition to candidates for Mayor and City Commissioner, there will also be a ranked choice voting question on the November 7 ballot in the city of Kalamazoo. Between May 28, 2022 and May 24, 2023, about a dozen Rank MI Vote volunteers collected approximately 3,300 non-duplicate signatures from city of Kalamazoo registered voters on citizens' initiative petitions, about 550 more than the 2,745 needed. I collected 564. The 2,745 number was 5% of the number of voters registered in the city of Kalamazoo. One month later on June 26, the City Clerk's office notified Rank MI Vote leadership that we had qualified for the November ballot in the city of Kalamazoo. The last time that the City Clerk's office processed a citizens' initiative was nearly 13 years ago in August 2010 when petitions for a marijuana lowest enforcement priority Charter Amendment were submitted. This is my favorite video that explains how ranked choice voting works and its benefits.

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