by Abby Vesoulis
September 13, 2022
Introduction:
Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... midterms/(Mother Jones) “I just need some space” is a disingenuous way to tell a romantic partner you’re Just Not That Into Them. As the top Michigan court ruled last week, it’s also a disingenuous way to attempt to remove from the Michigan midterm ballot an abortion-rights referendum that received 325,000 more voter signatures than the required 425,000.
But that’s what Citizens to Support Michigan Women and Children argued last month in a complaint to Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers. The anti-abortion group alleged the proposed ballot measure text, which sought to explicitly insert into Michigan’s constitution reproductive rights up until fetal viability, lacked enough spacing between words, rendering the verbiage into “groupings of letters that are found in no dictionary and are incapable of having any meaning.”
To be clear, the amendment is at the very least legible. Restaurants and magazines probably shouldn’t employ the ballot measure’s maker to design their menus or page layouts, but it’s not the “hodgepodge of nonsensical gibberish” that Citizens to Support Michigan Women and Children made it out to be.
Nonetheless, the spacing complaint culminated in the amendment being blocked from the ballot because it needed the sign-off of three Board of State Canvassers members, and the group was split 2-2 on their decision along party lines. In a last-ditch effort, the abortion-rights group Reproductive Freedom for All, which spearheaded the ballot initiative, requested the state’s highest court weigh in on the issue.
In a 5-2 decision on Thursday night, the state Supreme Court ordered the ballot referendum to be reinstated in the upcoming election. The Michigan Board of Canvassers then voted unanimously to follow the court’s order on Friday, which was the state’s deadline to certify ballots before clerks can begin sending them to voters ahead of the November 8 election.
