A petition campaign to outlaw an abortion procedure has been given another chance to prove it’s gathered enough signatures to accomplish its goal.
Right to Life of Michigan wants the Legislature to adopt a veto-proof initiative to ban the dilation-and-extraction procedure. It turned in its petitions to the state Bureau of Elections. But a sample of petition signatures showed the campaign came up short of the 340,047 names required.
Right to Life appealed to the Board of State Canvassers, which took the unusual step of telling the bureau to go back and draw a bigger sample.
Genevieve Marnon is with Right to Life.
“I’m optimistic and I’m going to keep my fingers crossed that the second sample will result in a certification,” Marnon said.
Angela Vasquez Giroux is with Planned Parenthood of Michigan, which opposes the initiative.
“We expect we’ll have a new sample within the next couple of days and we will do the same thing we did with the last one, and we undoubtedly still find that it’s sloppy and there are a lot of problems with it,” Giroux said.
Giroux also said the state should not bend the rules for one petition campaign.