Michigan officials urged the Supreme Court on Wednesday to reject an emergency effort by an activist group to place a measure on the ballot for an amendment requiring proof of citizenship to vote, ahead of the November elections.
The group Americans for Citizen Voting Michigan filed an emergency petition to the Supreme Court earlier this week, urging the justices to place their proposed ballot measure before Michigan voters and alleging that the state had unlawfully rejected their petition to place the amendment up for a vote.
ACVM alleged in its petition that state officials had rejected the measure because it fell below the required number of valid signatures taken from a 1,000-signature sample of the petition for ballot access. The group claimed that when it brought sworn affidavits to remedy several of the rejected signatures, the Michigan Bureau of Elections still rejected the signatures for not matching the state database, despite telling the group to get affidavits to verify the validity of the signatures.
“By disregarding the very affidavits the Bureau directed ACVM to procure—and thus disregarding sworn testimony from nine Michigan voters that they signed the Petition—the Board violated Michigan law and the U.S. Constitution, and disenfranchised not just the nine affiants but the hundreds of thousands of Michigan voters that also signed ACVM’s petition,” the group argued to the high court earlier this week.
“It cannot be the case that government officials demand proof of someone’s identity, receive it, and then refuse to recognize that proof because those officials have a secret historical database that no one else is allowed to review or because those same officials were delinquent in their processes and arbitrary in their rules,” ACVM’s emergency petition continues, asking for their proposal to be placed on the ballot.
ACVM asked the high court to rule by Thursday, citing the deadline for ballots for the November election to be finalized and highlighting the inaction of the Michigan Supreme Court when the group asked it first to issue emergency relief. Michigan officials responded to the group’s “highly unusual” emergency petition to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, claiming ACVM wants the high court to “be the first court to review their claims, and the application provides limited and sparse citation to any law.”
Michigan Solicitor General Ann Sherman wrote that the emergency application is “sorely lacking in factual bases and legal substance,” arguing the issue at the center of the petition is a state matter, not a federal matter, that should therefore be handled by state courts.
“The Court should decline to put its thumb on the scale in this manner, particularly in the case of a state administrative proceeding where a state court can provide more fulsome and comprehensive review,” Sherman wrote, arguing that the high court should stay out of the legal dispute. “These factors plainly weigh in favor denying relief.”
The response filed by Michigan officials to the Supreme Court also noted that the group’s emergency petition needed resolution by Friday.
SUPREME COURT ALLOWS TRUMP TO CONTINUE WHITE HOUSE BALLROOM CONSTRUCTION
The Supreme Court’s emergency docket had been slower for much of the summer compared to the historic pace set during the first year of President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, but as the high court’s next term is set to begin in the coming weeks, the emergency docket has had several notable cases petitioned to the justices.
Two of the most notable emergency docket rulings came late last month, when the Supreme Court lifted a block on Trump’s mail-in ballot executive order and allowed construction of the White House ballroom project to continue. The high court is still weighing multiple emergency petitions, including a petition from a religious mother seeking to keep her unvaccinated child enrolled in school and a petition from the GOP’s congressional campaign arm regarding a ruling over cheaper campaign advertisement rates.