
The Michigan Comprehensive Cannabis Law Reform Committee (MILegalize) filed suit against the State of Michigan Board of Canvassers and others for their failure to appropriately count signatures gathered for its initiative, says attorney Matthew Abel, executive director of Michigan NORML and board member of MILegalize.
The suit is a mandamus action to require the board to use the state’s Qualified Voter File to check petition signatures older than the state’s 180-day limit, says Abel. The suit names Secretary of State Ruth Johnson, the Board of State Canvassers and the Director of the Bureau of Elections, Christopher Thomas, as defendants.
The people cited have no current comment regarding the suit, says Fred Woodhams, spokesman for the Michigan Bureau of Elections.
The Court of Claims filing also requests the judge to strike down Public Act 142 of 2016, also known as Senate Bill 776, which was signed into law May 25 by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, according to a press release from MILegalize.
The complaint includes additional constitutional claims that Senate Bill 776 was not properly enacted, and in that instance seeks damages up to $3 million, including attorney fees.
MILegalize filed a total of about 354,000 signatures on about 55,000 petition sheets June 1 to be qualified. But the June 7 Bureau of Elections staff report to the Board of Canvassers estimates no more than 146,413 could be counted, with another 137,029 older than 180 days. To qualify for placement on the November ballot, the group needed 252,523 signatures.
“The election staff found that [MILegalize] did not have enough valid signatures to go on the ballot,” said Woodhams in a previous interview. “A number of those signatures were filed outside the 180-day period, and they were not rehabilitated in a way that would allow them to be counted.”
Under the board’s 1986 policy, signatures older than 180 days could not be counted without either an affidavit directly from the original signer, or affidavits from county clerks verifying each signer as a registered voter. The policy was made state law through Senate Bill 776, which established the strict 180-day limit.
Gathering affidavits from each questioned signer is “more than duplicating the work,” says Abel, and the group has no authority to require any county clerk to actually verify signatures for them.
MILegalize turned in a statement and signed affidavit from its board of directors with the signatures requesting the Board of Canvassers to use the electronic Qualified Voter File to verify older signatures. The June 7 Bureau of Elections report notes the alternative proposition that the statement “concludes that the voter registration records themselves would comply with 1986 rebuttal policy because the voter registration forms submitted by voters could constitute affidavits and the local clerks’ acceptance of the transactions could constitute certification by the clerk.”
The report disregards the proposition because the accompanying affidavit does not prove signers were registered voters at the time of signing.
“They needed to have an affidavit or a certificate from the signer or the appropriate clerk that the person was registered to vote and they were registered to vote currently and when they signed,” said Woodhams previously about the request to use the Qualified Voter File. “They did make that pitch to the board, but the board did not agree to that. The Bureau of Election staff used the policy that the board approved for rehabilitating signatures in 1986, and because these signatures did not follow the policy, they could not be counted.”
“The policy they’re working under was drafted in the 80s, and that was before we had the electronic Qualified Voter File,” says Abel. “Now that we have that, it should be much easier for them to verify that these signers still are registered to vote and live at the address where they signed. We think they’re making it unnecessarily difficult.”
Abel expects a hearing for the case in June or early July, since election cases are expedited, but the deadline of absentee ballot printing is approaching quickly. Those ballots won’t be printed until after the August primary is certified, so “we have some time, but that’ll move quickly,” he says.
“Basically, they have the information, they’re just not willing to look at it,” says Abel. “We think we have very good grounds. We expect to win this case eventually.”
Photo: Thomas Lavigne and Jeffrey Hank of MILegalize, photo courtesy of Jim Powers.