Michigan goes fully F….atuous
You think these people aren’t enemies of democracy?
A citizen-initiative ballot measure seeking to enshrine abortion rights in the Michigan state constitution was blocked Wednesday from being certified for the November ballot.
The Michigan Board of State Canvassers on Wednesday deadlocked on a party line 2-2 vote whether to certify the Reproductive Freedom for All ballot initiative to the November ballot, throwing its future into uncertainty. The measure won’t appear on the ballot for now, but the campaign behind the initiative said it plans to bring the issue before the state Supreme Court.
“(Reproductive Freedom for All) is heading to the Michigan Supreme Court to ask that the Board of State Canvassers do their jobs. The State Bureau of Elections recommended the board certify our signatures, noting it had no standing to act on the language,” the campaign said on Twitter.
“The board is disenfranchising hundreds of voters who want to restore Roe and keep in place the reproductive rights we’ve had in Michigan for the last 50 years,” it argued.
The Michigan Bureau of Elections had last week recommended to the board that it approve certification of the petition.
Reproductive Freedom for All submitted more than 750,000 signatures to the Secretary of State’s office in July. In its staff report the Bureau of Elections estimated the petition had 596,379 valid signatures — about 146,000 more than the minimum signatures required.
So what excuse did they come up with? You will not believe it:
Opponents, however, challenged the proposed amendment over the petition’s lack of spacing between words...
In its staff report, the Bureau noted that Michigan election law is “silent on the amount of space that must be between letters and words in a petition.”
It doesn’t get stupider than that.
The Board of State Canvassers’ two Democrats voted to certify the petition while the board’s two Republicans, including the chair, voted against certification, agreeing with opponents’ objections to the amendment’s formatting. The RFFA plans to file a request for judicial intervention to the state Supreme Court “expeditiously,” spokeswoman Darci McConnell said.
Watch the Supreme Court say they can’t make the decision this close to the election.
Think about this. The rabid right which has been lobbying for decades to outlaw abortion is now ducking putting it on the ballot because they are afraid that pro-choicers will come out to vote and it will benefit the Democratic Party. So they’re relying on ridiculous rationales like the “spacing between the words” on the ballot initiative were sloppy. It just doesn’t get any more pathetic than that. Even more pathetic, it may very well work.