On April 20, U.S. District Court Judge Terrence G. Berg, an Obama appointee, issued an injunction in Esshaki v Whitmer, e.d., 2:20cv-10831.  It cuts the number of signatures needed for primary petitions by 50%, and extends the deadline from April 21 to May 8.  It also partially allows for electronic signatures.  Here is the 40-page opinion.

The opinion rebuts the idea that candidates should collect their petitions via postal mail.  It says that the plaintiff, Eric Esshaki, who needed 1,000 signatures to get on the Republican primary ballot for U.S. House, tried that.  He sent 1,000 letters to voters with an enclosed petition, and asked them to sign it and mail it back.  He paid the postage both ways.  That cost him $1.75 per letter, but it only yielded 15 signatures.  The order says that works out to a cost of $115 per signature.  The order also says that getting signatures this way means that willing recipients would need to get the petition into the postal delivery system, which is not necessarily easy when people are expected to remain at home.  Furthermore, the order says, the postal service itself is affected by the virus.  The order cites news stories about postal employees who are ill, and that as a result, postal mail is not as speedy as usual.