Arbor Update

Hooray!

Not so fast ! The sponsors of the measure may still take it to court and win. The Affirmative action proposal is a recent example.

I don’t know how the MCR7.215(j) might work, if the Board used a 1940 Michigan Supreme Court decision, you might be surprised to find out that Michigan Court of Appeals is not bound by stare decisis for cases decided before November 1, 1990:

MCR 7.215(J)(1) Precedential Effect of Published Decisions. A panel of the Court of Appeals must follow the rule of law established by a prior published decision of the Court of Appeals issued on or after November 1, 1990, that has not been reversed or modified by the Supreme Court, or by a special panel of the Court of Appeals as provided in this rule.

http://courtofappeals.mijud.net/rules/public/MCR7.htm#7.215

REMEMBER the on or after November 1, 1990.

Srini

I don’t see how that applies. First, it talks about COA decisions published before 1990. The 1940 decision was by the Michigan Supreme Court, not the Court of Appeals. So whatever rules applies to COA rulings has nothing to do with a Michigan Supreme Court ruling, even if it dates back to 1940.

Normally, a Court of Appeals will defer to a Michigan Supreme Court ruling unless the decision is clearly contrary to current case law, there’s been some change in legislation that makes the previous decision contrary to the law or the Court decides that it’s going to issue a decision contrary to the previous decision to force the Michigan Supreme Court to revisit the decision. I very much doubt that a COA will do that in this case. They realize that the Michigan Supreme Court will likely have final say on this so there’s no reason to force the issue. Considering that you can get petitions thrown out for not using the correct form, I very much doubt that the courts are going to have a problem rejecting a petition where there was numerous documented duplicates and unregistered voters signing. Sounds like the big dollar petition collecting firm wasn’t worth the money that they were paid.

The duplicates-don’t-count-at-all rule has been in use in Michigan for a very long time. Had the rule not existed, we would probably have seen different outcomes on some closely contested petition drives in the past.

My sense is that Michigan courts have been tightening petition standards over the years, not loosening them.

Courts ruled in favor of Nader during 2004 elecions (not exactly duplicate but another issue regarding petition signatures). These are Michigan Courts – Law, Constitution and precedence don’t apply !

This article implies that Nader got on the ballot in Michigan despite any court rulings:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9804E1DB103AF933A15754C0A9629C8B63

Supreme court keeps the measure off the november ballot. Anyway this is just the beginning, I hope the SOS group puts together another petition for the next election and with enough time collects the needed signatures.

Quoting the AP report – “Stop Overspending said the policy is unfair because many people inadvertently signed twice. The group held a news conference Thursday to complain that an employee of ACORN, a public interest group that opposes the issue, had signed the Stop Overspending petition 14 times”.

I hope SOS is able to take it to federal court and bring in charges of fraud and disruption of election process against that employee.

If this kind of fraud is allowed by Federal courts, then they should have let the GOP official go too in the NH case.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/16/AR2006051601712.html

Srini

Let’s for the sake of argument accept that one person signed it 14 times. I’ll leave it to Larry to tell us whether that’s a crime or not. But the courts didn’t keep the ballot proposal off the ballot because of one person. They kept it off because there were many duplicate signatures, signatures by people not even registered in Michigan and other flaws. Is the State supposed to overlook these fraudulent petitions because SOS found one person who signed multiple times?