Faux Tea Party - Rejected by Repubs on Board of Canvassers

by: Grebner

Mon Aug 23, 2010 at 17:33:08 PM EDT

It's only the next scene of the continuing farce, but the two Republican members voted against certifying the Tea Party petitions as having sufficient signatures.

Previous cases have held the Board of Canvassers is NOT supposed to consider the circumstances under which petitions were circulated, nor the merits of the proposal under consideration, but solely determine whether a sufficient number of voters properly signed.  (Recall Doyle OConner, Ward Connerly, and the so-called Michigan Civil Rights Initiative.)

I don't know how this will play out, but I have a general hunch Faux-Tea won't finally make the fall ballot, because eventually the Supreme Court will find a way to thwart Mark Brewer.  (Who isn't involved, of course.) 

Since the Elections Division staff had (I assume) recommended approval of the Faux-Tea petitions, and since no question was raised of their proper form or the number of signatures, Mike Hodge should have no problem getting the court to order the Faux-Tea party placed on the ballot.  Whether that will really happen is anybody's guess.  If it doesn't happen, because the Court of Appeals creates some new power or duty of the Board of Canvassers to weigh the merits of petitions, we'll never see another routine qualification of a new party, or approval of most initiative petitions, since there will ALWAYS be somebody opposed, who will concoct a similar complaint.

Eventually, there will be an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, which I expect will screw up Michigan's election law with some ill-considered newly thought up deus ex machina that favors the Republicans.  (Betty Weaver may not like them personally, but she still is one.  And she certainly doesn't want to advance  Mark Brewer's newest wacky scheme.  Even though he isn't involved.)

Update from MIRS, Monday 8/23/10: 

[At today's Board of Canvassers meeting, Mike] Hodge ... confessed that the notice of the party's July 24 convention was only sent to three people and only 10-15 people were in attendance at the Saginaw gathering."

According to MIRS, the ostensible reason for rejecting the petition was the inconsistent reference to "The Tea Party" versus the mere "Tea Party" with no capitalized definite article.  Seems like a pretty flimsy argument to this attorney, who wonders whether that standard could be applied to "the Republican Party" to disqualify its candidates, if they should happen to over-capitalize it on a filing.

Let the ridiculous posturing continue!  On to the Court of Appeals, with its uncapitalized article... 

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