Citizens-only voting petition sponsors look to 2028 after initiative fails before state canvassers

Filed 37m ago · Via Michigan Advance · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Dan Scavino · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

Both the U.S. Supreme Court and the Michigan Supreme Court declined to intervene after the Board of State Canvassers kept a citizens-only voting and voter ID measure off Michigan's November ballot, finding the petition's signatures fell just short of the required validity threshold.

Organizer Paul Jacob says the group will return in 2028 with enough signatures to be, in his words, cheat-proof and rig-proof. Former Michigan elections director Chris Thomas and election lawyer Mark Brewer both call the process routine and dismiss claims of unfair treatment, with Thomas noting the group only needed 62.9% of signatures valid and missed it.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh's denial came without a published opinion, which Brewer reads as a signal the claims were weak; Jacob instead directs his frustration at the Michigan Supreme Court for what he calls a lack of communication before ruling.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Missing a bar by a few signatures and blaming the ruler instead of the measuring is a pretty common instinct, but it does not make the ruler wrong. Two people who ran elections for decades looked at the same paperwork and shrugged, calling it ordinary quality control. When the fix for falling short by inches is to show up with a mile more paper, that sounds less like a conspiracy and more like an admission.

Source: Read the original at Michigan Advance → Scored: Grim League · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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