As already reported, a U.S. District Court Judge cut the number of signatures for Michigan primary candidates early this week, and then the state filed a request for reconsideration, saying he didn’t really need the relief, so the decision should be altered to no longer cut the number of signatures.  The state said it knows he didn’t need the relief because he turned in approximately 1,200 signatures.

On April 24, the lead plaintiff, Eric Esshaki, who needed 1,000 signatures to get on the Republican primary ballot for U.S. House, filed a court document explaining that after he won the lawsuit, that got him so much publicity that many voters filled out the petition blank he had postally sent them and returned it to him.  So, when he submitted his petition, it had more signatures than he had expected.  Here is his interesting statement.  Many of the signatures returned to him were put in his home mailbox by persons driving by to help him, rather than going through the postal mail.  Unfortunately many of the signatures were invalid because people signed the petition as voters, but then didn’t fill out the bottom of the petition saying they were also the circulators.