(Source: MIRS.news, Published 04/10/2024) GOP lawmakers' legal claim that a pair of voting expansion state constitutional amendments sponsored by Promote the Vote violated the Legislature's federal constitutional right to determine the time, place and manner of elections was thrown out by a federal court Wednesday.
A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit brought by Sen. Jonathan Lindsey (R-Brooklyn) and 10 other Republican state legislators who challenged Proposal 3 of 2018 and Proposal 2 of 2022 on the basis that they “have not met their burden at the pleading stage to demonstrate injury-in-fact” and failed to demonstrate they have standing.
“Without standing for bringing their claims, plaintiffs ask this Court for nothing more than a jurisdiction-less ‘advisory opinion,’” read the opinion from U.S. District Judge Jane M. Beckering.
Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a late afternoon statement that the lawsuit “was absurd and baseless from its inception.”
Nessel added: “I am glad the Court saw the plaintiffs' obvious lack of standing. Our democracy is participatory, and in Michigan citizen initiatives and referendums have long played a vital role in making our state government better reflect the values of our people."
Promote the Vote; a coalition of groups such as the NAACP, ACLU, the Michigan League for Public Policy and others; put the two constitutional amendments before voters in 2018 and 2022 as a way to expand Michiganders' ability to cast votes in elections. Both passed overwhelmingly.
Proposal 3 of 2018 put straight-ticket voting, no-reason absentee voting and same-day voter registration into the state constitution. Proposal 2 of 2022 created nine days of early in-person voting before an Election Day, more ballot drop boxes, a new state-funded system to track submitted absentee applications and pre-postage for ballots.
The suit named Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Elections Director Jonathan Brater as defendants.
The lawmakers claim they have standing as legislators, taxpayers and voters, but Beckering rejected those arguments.
The plaintiffs’ argument relied on the theory known as the “independent state legislature” theory, which is used to argue that neither the courts nor the voters can make or modify election laws related to a federal election.
Nessel said the theory re-emerged as a “right-wing fringe interpretation often espoused in support of former president Donald Trump’s undemocratic efforts to steal the 2020 presidential election.”
The U.S. Supreme Court also rejected the theory in 2023, holding that “individual members lack standing to assert the interests of a legislature.”
Beckering held the lawmakers’ “asserted injury” as taxpayers “is neither concrete nor particularized."
The Attorney General argued the legislators lacked standing to bring the lawsuit in their capacities as legislators, taxpayers, or as voters.
