Search by jurisdiction: county
Soft matching: yes
Signing dates: no sandwiching allowed, year not required
Transcribing: allowed for city and date only
The Kolehouse 2026 job is simplified over a typical Michigan petition. There is no county selection and no evaluation of city. The entire voter file and the entire petition is City of Lansing, and later it will all be City of Battle Creek. That means you can ignore fixable deficiencies and city abbreviations in the specs below, and the soft matching is against the whole voter file with no need to add the muni as a third word.
The shorthand is the
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.
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).
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.