Michigan House committee probes canvassing process amid dispute over citizen-only voting signatures

Filed 1h ago · Via Michigan Advance · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

One-eyed Maestro

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Miscellaneous Items in High Demand, PPOC, Library of Congres · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

A Michigan House committee is examining how the state's Board of Canvassers and Bureau of Elections handle petitions, after a citizen-only voting initiative failed certification when a sample review found too many invalid signatures. Backers, led by Paul Jacob of Americans for Citizen Voting-Michigan, say the group came up three signatures short after 14 of 23 sworn affidavits were accepted, and argue the review process denied them due process.

Election attorney Mark Brewer countered that the bureau simply processes petitions against fixed statutory deadlines and that the group could have avoided the crunch by filing earlier, since it was cleared to gather signatures more than a year before submission. Bureau officials say opening voter signatures to outside review, as Jacob wants, would risk identity theft and forgery.

The group is now eyeing another attempt for the 2028 cycle.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Missing the mark by three signatures and calling it suppression is like blaming the scale when your truck's overloaded by a few pounds. The rules were sitting in the statute the whole time, nobody hid them under a rock. If timing was the real problem, the fix was starting earlier, not rewriting the finish line after the race is run.

Source: Read the original at Michigan Advance → Scored: One-eyed Maestro · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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