On September 5, the Michigan State Appeals Court ruled that if an individual signs a petition twice, neither signature counts. As a result, a recall election in the city of Benton Harbor is now removed from the ballot. The trial court had ruled that one signature does count. The recall petition only has enough valid signatures if the signatures of voters who signed twice are counted as one valid signature.
Recall proponents have asked the Michigan Supreme Court to reverse the State Appeals Court.
First of all, common sense should tell a person that they can only sign a petition – no matter what the petition is far but one time. And any professional Petition Signature gatherer ought to know that he or she should FIRST ask the potential signer if they have already signed a petition. I like to think most folks are not so stupid that they can’t remember whether they’ve already signed a petition -especially for a candidate.
So I regrettable I have to agree with the Court here that a signature signed twice cannot count as even for one time. Because they are some people who know they have already signed a petition and do it anyway, perhaps knowing full well doing such is illegal, and some corrupt Petition Signature gatherers will collect the signatures hoping they won’t get caught.
It is rare that I agree with the Courts, but this is one time I have to agree.
It is illegal to *KNOWINGLY* sign more than once in Michigan — but the trial court specifically found evidence that it was not always easy for signers or even petitioners to know if someone had signed before or not. Which was one reason it found an unconstitutional burden in the counting rule used by the county — because a rule invalidating both signatures of anyone who signs twice is likely to discourage someone who hasn’t signed yet, but thinks he or she might have, from signing at all.
(This is in addition to the fact that total denial of core political speech — especially without proof of wrongdoing by a signer — is nowhere near narrowly tailored means to achieve even a compelling state interest.)
By the way, the Court of Appeals issued an order peremptorily reversing the Trial Court’s opinion and order without any explanation. (And it would cost $300 to get them to give a “clarification” of that.)
So “jalp” tends to agree with me there are alot of crooked voters who knowingly sign a petition twice – or even 3 times and some crooked Petition Signature gatherers who hope they can slip them through. If this is the case, I can see why many legislatures don’t won’t to lower the signatures.
Back in 2010, I signed a petition while waiting in line to go to the Zoo for an event night. That night, I couldn’t tell you what party the petition was for. I was pretty distracted by the events of the night to pay much attention other than I helped some party toward their goal of being recognized.
Under your and this court’s opinion, my safest bet from that point on is to avoid signing any more petitions just in case I sign the same one a second time. That is insane.
The first signature should still count. The second was merely a mistake and should not invalidate the first.
This is a horrible court ruling. The majority of people who sign a petition more than once do so by accident. Lots of people do not remember if they signed a petition, or they do not remember which petition they signed, so they sign the same petition again with the belief that they signed a different petition previously. There are also some people who do not understand that you are not supposed to sign the same petition more than once, and they will sign again thinking that they are helping out the petition circulator and/or the cause, when in reality they are not.
Every once in a while an unethical petition circulator will get people to sign more than once on purpose, but this rarely happens.
If there is a duplicate signature, it was most likely a mistake, and the only signature that should be thrown out should be the duplicate.
Sorry, Alabama Independent — I don’t agree with you on that. I agree that there are people who sign twice, and I would even agree that it is possible some people might do so deliberately in hopes of being counted twice. I think there is no way invalidating all valid signatures of a registered, qualified voter is a narrowly tailored measure.
The post you were responding to didn’t talk about my views at all. It just pointed out that the Court of Appeals panel didn’t say why it was reversing the trial court’s opinion.
I could make a decent argument that even deliberate double-signers might have a right to be counted once. However, I can also appreciate the result in _In re Nader_, 865 A2d 8, 73-74 (Pa Cmwlth 2004) where the parties agreed that people who signed the petition five times or more committed fraud and shouldn’t have any signatures counted. But even in that case, other signers still got counted once. Maybe a wise rule would allow for total invalidation of all of a signer’s signatures if that signer was proven to have committed fraud (or admitted to it).
True that, Andy. I would add that circulators and signers have separate, though closely related, rights. So if a circulator was unethical but the signer was properly qualified and not intentionally fraudulent, I would not invalidate all of the signer’s signatures.