Federal judge to decide Conyers' ballot status Friday

[struggle4progress]

Marlon A. Walker
Detroit Free Press
7:25 p.m. EDT May 21

DETROIT — A federal judge will decide Friday whether U.S. Rep John Conyers should be allowed on Michigan's Aug. 5 primary ballot or forced to seek his 26th term through a write-in campaign.

U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Leitman said Wednesday he wanted to make a decision quickly in the "exceptionally difficult" case to allow time for inevitable appeals that come as ballot preparation already has begun. Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson is expected to certify all candidates for election June 6.

Leitman heard arguments for two cases challenging the constitutionality of a Michigan law that requires people who circulate candidate petitions to be registered voters.

His decision will be joint on the cases, filed separately by the American Civil Liberties Union with petitioners Ederl Edna Moore, Tiara Willis-Pittman and Chinita Terry, all of Detroit, and by Highland Park activist Robert Davis. Terry and Willis-Pittman had circulated nominating petitions for Conyers, only to learn that none of the signatures they collected would be counted because they were not properly registered to vote. Moore is a voter. The defendants in both lawsuits are Johnson and Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett ...

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/05/21/john-conyers-primary-ballot-lawsuit/9393837/

[Supersedeas]

1. the rationale for this decision should be interesting

[struggle4progress]

2. Although Conyers seems to have collectede enough signatures of registered voters

to qualify for the ballot, Michigan law further requires that the petition-circulators themselves be registered voters, and Conyers fell afoul of this requirement

The state does have a suitable interest, in ensuring that enough registered voters support placing a candidate on the ballot, before the candidate is added to the ballot -- for otherwise, it is quite plausible that the ballot could run to many pages of pseudo-candidates for whom there was no measurable support

What is in question, as I understand it, is whether requiring petition-circulators to be registered voters: the argument against the requirement is that it unduly burdens political expression (expressed through the act of circulating petitions), without there being a suitable government interest justifying the burden

Courts have, in the past, taken the view, that requiring petition-circulators to be registered voters unduly burdens freedom of political expression, so this argument is not a recent sudden novelty imagined by Conyers and his lawyers

[Supersedeas]

3. any word from the Court today?

[struggle4progress]

4. Conyers won in court

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014810355