DETROIT —– What the nonpartisan advocacy group Voters Not Politicians has managed to accomplish in Michigan over the last few years seems almost miraculous. Seven years ago, VNP burst on the scene, a group of mainly young and fresh faces with little to no funding and proclaimed that they intended to amend Michigan’s constitution and take redistricting away from the Legislature.

Instead, they proposed to set up a Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission to do it in a nonpartisan way. The experts ignored them or rolled their eyes. But VNP got it on the ballot, got it passed, and withstood court challenges.

They won, and felt the voters did too. Four years later, VNP was back with two new proposals: One was to allow early voting for the first time in Michigan history, and to m

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