On February 18, the Michigan Senate Judiciary Committee passed four bills that say that when a government elections office misinforms a candidate about how many signatures are needed, the candidate can get extra time to get more signatures. However, the bills only relate to candidates for judicial offices. They are SB 21 (for candidates for Judge of the Circuit Court), SB 22 (Judge of the District Court), SB 23 (Judge of Probate Court) and SB 24 (Judge of Municipal Court). Thanks to Bill Hall for this news.
This is probably aimed at judicial offices because it’s an attempted legislative override of _Martin v Secretary of State_, (decided by the Michigan Court of Appeals last August 21 and then reversed only in part by the state Supreme Court September 4):
http://coa.courts.mi.gov/documents/OPINIONS/FINAL/COA/20080821_C286015_55_125O-286015OPN.PDF
(sadly, this leaves off a very interesting dissent —
by a judge I had the fortune of having as an adjunct
professor at Cooley Law School)
I haven’t found a public link yet for the Supreme Court’s order — but I’ll quote the key deciding paragraph below. (And leave out the rather rancorous dispute among the concurrences and dissents.)
Martin was running for a seat on the 23rd Circuit Court. Since the previous elections for that seat, state law had been amended to add a county to that circuit — and that in turn boosted the range of signatures required to be filed from 100-200 to 200-400. State law also requires the Supreme Court Administrator’s Office to notify the Bureau of Elections of such impacts — but only in cases of new judgeships, not for reorganizations such as this. So, when Martin asked the Bureau how many signatures he needed — twice — he was given the old, lower, incorrect figure (which was also posted online) both times.
After some odd twists and turns of logic in the lower courts — including, IIRC, one argument that Martin wasn’t blocked from filing exactly 200 signatures to satisfy both range requirements(!) — the Supreme Court handed down its wisdom. You decide whether it was more Solomonic or Delphic:
/===============================================
On order of the Court, the motion for immediate consideration is GRANTED. The application for
leave to appeal the August 21, 2008 judgment of
the Court of Appeals is considered and, pursuant
to MCR 7.302(G)(1), in lieu of granting leave
to appeal, we REVERSE the judgments of the Court
of Appeals and the Ingham Circuit Court for the
reasons stated in the Court of Appeals dissenting
opinion, but only as to the issues of candidate
standing and the trial court’s application of
equity. A candidate for elective office suffers
a cognizable injury in fact if, due to the
improper interpretation and enforcement of
election law, he or she is prevented from being
placed on the ballot or must compete against
someone improperly placed on the ballot. We
REINSTATE the decision of the Secretary of
State to remove plaintiff Christopher P.
Martin’s name from the ballot. In all other
respects, leave to appeal is denied, because
we are not persuaded that the remaining
questions presented should be reviewed by
this Court. We do not retain jurisdiction.
===============================================/
Now, having said all that, I must admit I still can’t see why the reform should be limited to judicial candidates. . . .
jalp
How about making it a FELONY for MORON party hack election stooges to give out FALSE INFO ???
The stooges will then just point to the law (perhaps) and say — the law is the law.