Gongwer News Service
Judges of the Michigan Court of Appeals sided with the Department of State in a lawsuit brought by an Oakland County judicial candidate who argued his request for additional review of his signatures submitted for ballot access was unfairly denied – but offered what was seemingly a critique of how lawmakers wrote the statute at hand.
In Drissman v. Department of State (COA Docket No. 380984), Oakland County Probate Court Judge candidate Ariel Drissman filed nominating petitions with the Oakland County Clerk’s Office containing 4,716 signatures, 716 more than required to meet the 4,000-signature threshold for ballot access. The clerk’s review concluded that only 3,862 of those signatures were valid and his petition was declared insufficient.
Drissman submitted a written request for Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s review, as candidates have the right to do. He included 111 voter statements attesting that they personally signed the petition on dates certain and verifying their signatures as “genuine.”
Elections Director Jonathan Brater reviewed Drissman’s request. However, since it was submitted five days after the end of a three-day window for Drissman to request a review of his petition being declared insufficient, the voter statements could not be considered, he said, and the signatures were checked against the Qualified Voter File.
Upon Brater’s review of Drissman’s petitions in comparison to the QVF, he found the Oakland County clerk improperly struck 23 signatures, but Drissman was still short of the threshold by 115.
The judges wrote in their opinion that “MCL 168.552(6) requires the Secretary of State to review the county clerk’s determination, but that statute does not authorize a carte blanche investigation of signatures ‘as a candidate sees fit.’”
Michigan election law does not require nor permit the relief sought by the plaintiff, Judge Christopher Trebilcock wrote in the court’s opinion. However, the judges ended the opinion with “an observation” calling into question whether the statute which prohibited Brater from considering those 111 statements from voters attesting the validity of their signatures is one that functions fairly.
“The currently enacted legislative scheme seemingly does not permit a candidate to rehabilitate signatures through submission of affidavits because of the discretionary enforcement of the filing deadline as a deadline to submit supporting documentation and the statutory mandate that signatures be compared solely through use of the qualified voter file,” Trebilcock wrote at the opinion’s conclusion. “These are policy choices our Legislature has made and ones we must enforce. We question, however, whether that decision rightly limits review of legitimate ballot-access considerations for those aspiring to hold public office.”
The plaintiff’s complaint was denied, but a rare statement on the wisdom of the law itself from judges may pique interest within the legislative sphere to raise the issue further.
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