Michigan voters silenced by trumped up technicality

There’s an expression for this among the young people on the social internets but I can’t use it here in a family newspaper, so I’m just going to say, are you kidding me? It only takes two Republicans to subvert the voting rights of almost a quarter of million voters in Michigan? And they can use an arbitrary and bogus excuse to squash the will of the citizens and invalidate a legitimate petition to repeal the EFM law?

Republicans cited the wrong font size on the title of the petitions circulated by Stand Up For Democracy, a coalition of groups that launched the petition campaign, as the reason for not approving the initiative for the ballot. Opponents gathered 203,238 signatures, roughly 40,000 more than needed to get a repeal question on the ballot. [...]

Printer Bruce Hack of Inland Press said he certified the type size met legal requirements before printing the petitions.

Font size? Really? Are these two Republican operatives typography experts? And even if you accept their premise that the word “shall” implies mandatory compliance with the technical standards, there’s no stated requirement for which font to use that I’ve seen. Eclectablog researched fonts and found they vary in ruler size. But the Republicans on the Board ignored the expert testimony to that effect and knowingly ruled against the petition based on flawed analysis. This is what happens when you put Republicans in power.

And for the record, I think neither one of these people on the Board should have been involved in making the call. They both had a clear conflict of interest. Which makes me wonder why decisions of this much import are left to only four people anyway? An even split between only four seems designed to protect the status quo against the will of the voters.