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SOS Preliminary Report Update
Friends, By now, many of you are aware that the Michigan Secretary of State has released their preliminary review of the petition signatures submitted for the purpose of recalling the tax-raising Speaker of the Michigan House, Andy Dillon. The Secretary of State's (SOS) preliminary review contends that the petition drive is 500 signatures short of the 8,724 valid signatures required for Speaker Dillon to face recall, despite having turned in over 15,500 signatures. The SOS believes that several petition circulators who gathered a very significant number of signatures are not registered voters residing in Andy Dillon's district. The SOS maintains that these contested circulators are citizens who may well have Redford Township mailing addresses (all of Redford Township is in Dillon's district), but live in homes that are just outside the district. In other words, just because your house has a Redford postal address does not mean your house is physically in Redford. Michigan Recalls is now reviewing the SOS report. There will be signatures disqualified by the SOS that will be found valid. For example, a signer who dated their signature on 4-18-2008 was disqualified because their handwritten '4' looks too much like a '9'. I do not know how many signatures will be re-qualified by the SOS as a result of our rebuttals. There is another legal consideration. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in a case called 'Buckley v. the State of Colorado' that a state cannot require a citizen to be a registered voter in order for them to be allowed to exercise their other political rights. In other words, a state cannot require a citizen to register to vote before they will recognize a citizen's right to free speech. The courts have determined that petitioning is core political speech. Legal options are being reviewed. Some of the signatures that the SOS believes are invalid may be the result of deliberate sabotage by paid operatives of Speaker Dillon and Michigan Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer. On May 23rd, a woman named Julianne Cuneo testified that Dillon's and Brewer's attorney paid her to infiltrate the recall campaign. Ms. Cuneo testified that she misrepresented herself to the petition drive organizer in order to trick the campaign into hiring her. Ms. Cuneo admitted under oath in court that she then participated in election fraud by knowing gathering signatures and having other people sign as the official circulator. Taking on the Speaker of the House is exceptionally difficult. Recalls in general are hard because they have to comply with laws unique to recall petitioning, but taking on a sitting speaker means taking on an entire political party and all of the Lansing establishment. Every lobbyist is expected to donate to Speaker Dillon's defense. That defense has included nasty blockers, hired thugs, and paid saboteurs who will stop at absolutely nothing in their efforts to throttle the citizens' constitutional right to ask for a recall election. The SOS will issue their final validity report on June 5th. By then, we will have done our best to rebut many of the findings in the SOS preliminary report and review all legal options. Things have and will continue to be difficult, but it ain't over yet. I’ll keep you posted. Leon Drolet |
