The ongoing spat between write-in mayoral candidate Mike Duggan and perennial mayoral candidate Tom Barrow continues on as Barrow is now arguing that the ruling that booted Duggan's name from the ballot for an improper candidate filing also bars him from running as a write-in.
Based on the previous legal rulings in the Barrow-Duggan spat, who really knows how this one will turn out? But Metro Times' Curt Guyette ponders what the decisions by Lita Popke and the Michigan Court of Appeals to remove Duggan's name from the ballot mean to future interpretations of election law.
Metro Times: To be honest, both Popke’s ruling and the decision by the Court of Appeals to uphold it, took us by surprise. It has long been our understanding that, when it comes to election law, the well-established precedent is to have an expansive rather than narrow interpretation. The idea is that, when at all possible, decisions about who’s fit to serve should be left to voters rather than judges.
That’s certainly the position we held last year when right-wingers were using a technical dispute over font sizes as a pretense for keeping off the ballot a measure seeking to overturn the state’s emergency manager law.
So, even though a lot of lefties aren’t all that enamored with Duggan, the rulings by Popke and the Court of Appeals came as a disappointment here.
In the wake of last week's Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act, there's no shortage of new concerns about voter suppression efforts and the disproportionate impact of those efforts on minority voters. Of course, one of the most effective ways to suppress voter participation, is to just purge folks from the voting rolls on technical or even erroneous grounds.
If candidates can be purged from the ballot for technical mistakes with their filings, then it stands to reason that voters should be held to the same standard.
I'm sorry, you checked the wrong box on your application. No presidential vote for you. Oh, you believe that's not correct? Well, we can sort that out before the next election. Right now, I need you to clear the line.
Justice is blind and precedent is precedent. Right?
