For the first time, Michigan election officials will hold a Libertarian primary in August 2017. The party polled enough votes last year to qualify for a primary for itself. See this extensive analysis of past minor party primaries in Michigan, written by Greg Stempfle. Thanks to Scotty Boman for the link.
Congratulations to the LPM — and watch out; anybody can file as a Libertarian now, with enough signatures or for many offices with $100.
The Working Class Party’s only statewide candidate also had enough votes to cross the threshold — but the Bureau of Elections has changed its past interpretations of state law, and now says it DOES matter that the WCP ran some Congressional candidates (NOT statewide) who appeared higher up on the ballot. You’d pretty much have to WIN a Congressional seat to qualify for the primary if that’s your “top of the ticket” office.
I just found evidence that the Tisch Independent Citizens Party (a precursor of today’s US Taxpayers Party of Michigan, mentioned in the Stempfle analysis as having gotten enough top-of-ticket votes in 1986 and 1990 to be in the primaries for 1988 and 1992) had at least two US House candidates in 1990 that apparently weren’t held to have supplanted Tisch himself as the top-of-ticket candidate for ballot status.
http://www.dcpoliticalreport.com/members/1990/MI90.htm
I don’t see any Tisch Independent Citizens Party US House candidates in this site’s 1986 page — and they don’t show any state legislative races either year. (Well, they are the “DC Political Report”.) And the texts of the relevant sections of law on ballot order (MCL 168.697) and qualifying for the primary (MCL 168.532) have gone unchanged since the 1970s.