On September 4, attorneys for the Michigan Secretary of State asked the Sixth Circuit to remove Chris Graveline from the ballot. Graveline is the independent candidate for Attorney General who won injunctive relief on August 27, against the mid-July petition deadline and the requirement that he collect 30,000 signatures. Here is the state’s brief.

Graveline’s response is due September 5 at 5 p.m. Michigan time.

The state’s brief says that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld California’s independent petition requirement in Storer v Brown in 1974. This is not true. The U.S. Supreme Court didn’t decide whether California’s independent candidate petition requirements were too difficult or not, and remanded the case back to the lower court to gather more evidence. But the U.S. Supreme Court did say in Storer v Brown that petition requirements that are seldom used are probably unconstitutional. Attorneys for California told the California legislature that they did not believe they could win the Storer case on remand, and asked the California legislature to ease the requirement, which the legislature did in 1976.

The state’s brief does not even attempt to defend the petition deadline. Case law almost unanimously agrees that non-presidential independent petition deadlines cannot be earlier than a state’s primary.