STATE CONSTITUTION (EXCERPT)
CONSTITUTION OF MICHIGAN OF 1963§ 10 Limitations on terms of office of members of the United States House of Representatives and United States Senate from Michigan.
Sec. 10.
No person shall be elected to office as representative in the United States House of Representatives more than three times during any twelve year period. No person shall be elected to office as senator in the United States Senate more than two times during any twenty-four year period. Any person appointed or elected to fill a vacancy in the United States House of Representatives or the United States Senate for a period greater than one half of a term of such office, shall be considered to have been elected to serve one time in that office for purposes of this section. This limitation on the number of times a person shall be elected to office shall apply to terms of office beginning on or after January 1, 1993.
The people of Michigan hereby state their support for the aforementioned term limits for members of the United States House of Representatives and United States Senate and instruct their public officials to use their best efforts to attain such a limit nationwide.
The people of Michigan declare that the provisions of this section shall be deemed severable from the remainder of this amendment and that their intention is that federal officials elected from Michigan will continue voluntarily to observe the wishes of the people as stated in this section, in the event any provision of this section is held invalid.
This section shall be self-executing. Legislation may be enacted to facilitate operation of this section, but no law shall limit or restrict the application of this section. If any part of this section is held to be invalid or unconstitutional, the remaining parts of this section shall not be affected but will remain in full force and effect.
History: Add. Init., approved Nov. 3, 1992, Eff. Dec. 19, 1992
Constitutionality: U.S. Supreme Court found that an amendment to the Arkansas Constitution prohibiting the name of an otherwise-eligible candidate for Congress from appearing on the ballot if that candidate had already served 3 terms in the House of Representatives and 2 terms in the Senate was in violation of the Federal Constitution. The Supreme Court held that: “(1) states may not impose qualifications for offices of the United States representative or United States senator in addition to those set forth by the Constitution; (2) power to set additional qualifications was not reserved to the states by the Tenth Amendment; and (3) state provision is unconstitutional when it has likely effect of handicapping a class of candidates and has sole purpose of creating additional qualifications indirectly.” US Term Limits, Inc v Thornton, 514 US 779; 115 S Ct 1842; 131 L Ed 2d 884 (1995).