On April 22, Michigan state officials asked U.S. District Court Judge Terrence Berg to reconsider his decision of April 20 that cut the number of signatures for primary petitions for Congress to 50% of the normal requirement of 1,000 signatures.  The state says that the plaintiff, Eric Esshaki, submited his petition on April 21, and that the state was surprised to see that he had 1,263 signatures.  Here is the state’s motion.

The state assumes that he must have had at least 1,000 valid signatures, and says the entire lawsuit rested on his claim that he couldn’t obtain 1,000 valid signatures.  Because the state assumes he didn’t need any court relief, it says the court should rescind the part of its order cutting the number of signatures.

The state’s new filing says nothing about the other candidates who had intervened in the case.  Chances are some of them really do need relief, even if it is certain that Esshaki doesn’t need relief.  The state also says it has no objection to the part of the original ruling that extended the deadline to May 8.

The state says “The reduction of signatures is an unprecedented disruption to the established and traditional process for candidates to gain ballot access in Michigan.”  This is not true.  Between 1976 and 1988, the state had no statutory procedures for independent candidates to get on the ballot.  So in every election in Michigan starting in 1976, through 1984, every independent candidate who wanted to be on the ballot in Michigan filed a federal lawsuit, and every time the federal court put the independent on the ballot with no petition at all.  In 1986 the state announced that any independent could get on the ballot with no petition, just by requesting to be on.  And in 1988, after the legislature finally passed a procedure for independent petitions, federal courts ruled that imposing a new petition on independent candidates so late in the season (April 1988), it violated due process to require a petition in 1988.  So, the state’s new 2020 filing ignores this history and makes a claim that is untrue.

The state says the 50% cut in primary petitions presents “an opportunity for frivolous candidacies, voter confusion, and a cluttered ballot”, even though all that was rebutted by other federal courts in Michigan in 2018 in the litigation against the 30,000-signature requirement for statewide independents.