State of Michigan responds to Americans for Citizen Voting appeal to US Supreme Court

Filed 51m ago · Via Michigan Advance · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Song of the Volga Boatmen

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: National Photo Company. · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

The Board of State Canvassers deadlocked on a citizens-only voting ballot measure, and its sponsors, Americans for Citizen Voting, asked the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency injunction to force the measure onto Michigan's November ballot.

State officials, including Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, responded that ballot initiative processes are state-created rights, not First Amendment guarantees, and that granting the injunction would hand the sponsors everything they could ever win in court without justifying the request.

The dispute centers on nine rejected signatures the sponsors say were wrongly excluded over late affidavits, signatures they needed to clear the ballot threshold. With ballots due to be finalized September 4th, the sponsors also filed with the Michigan Supreme Court four days earlier but got no ruling, prompting the leapfrog to Washington that the state calls highly unusual.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Asking the U.S. Supreme Court to be the first court ever to look at your claims, days before a deadline of your own choosing, is a bold definition of due process. The state's brief reads like someone patiently explaining that skipping the line doesn't make you right, just fast.

Source: Read the original at Michigan Advance → Scored: Song of the Volga Boatmen · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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