Socialist Workers Party v. Hare, Civ. A. No. 33120.
| Decision Date | 01 October 1969 |
| Docket Number | Civ. A. No. 33120. |
| Citation | 304 F. Supp. 534 |
| Parties | SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY; Frank Lovell, Chairman of the State Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party; Evelyn Kirsch, Secretary of the State Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party, Plaintiffs, v. James M. HARE, individually and as Secretary of the State of Michigan; Bernard J. Apol, individually and as Director of Elections and Secretary of the Board of Canvassers of the State of Michigan, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Western District of Michigan |
James T. Lafferty, Lafferty, Reosti, Jabara, Papakhian, James, Stickgold & Smith, Detroit, Mich., for plaintiffs.
Frank J. Kelley, Atty. Gen., Charles D. Hackney, Asst. Atty. Gen., Lansing, Mich., for defendants.
Under § 168.685 of the Michigan Compiled Laws, a provision of the Michigan Election Law, in order for the name of a candidate of a new political party to be printed on the ballot, the political party must file petitions bearing the signatures of registered voters equal to not less than 1% nor more than 5% of the number of votes received by the successful candidate for secretary of state in the last election in which a secretary of state was elected. This provision further provides that "the petitions shall be signed by at least 100 residents in each of at least 10 counties of the state and not more than 35% of the minimum required number of the signatures may be by resident electors of any one county."
Plaintiffs are presently seeking a ballot position for the 1970 election.1 In this action they are challenging the constitutionality of the above-stated requirement that the petitions contain at least 100 signatures from voters of each of 10 counties and that no more than 35% of the minimum required signatures be by voters of any one county.
Plaintiffs contend that the outcome of this case is controlled by the decision of the Supreme Court in Moore v. Ogilvie, 394 U.S. 814, 89 S.Ct. 1493, 23 L.Ed.2d 1 (1969), holding unconstitutional a provision in the Illinois election statute. Under the Illinois law, a petition containing at least 25,000 signatures must be filed as a prerequisite to the nomination of a political candidate. The further requirement that the 25,000 signatures include at least 200 signatures from each of 50 counties was there held to be unconstitutional as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.
Defendants have attempted to distinguish the Michigan statute from the Illinois statute involved in Moore v. Ogilvie. Defendants first contend that the Illinois statute was designed to require a statewide support of a political party, while the Michigan statute "is designed to require a modicum of distributed support sufficient to justify burdening all 83 Michigan counties with the expense of conducting an election with a particular party on the ballot." This contention is based on the fact that the Illinois statute required signatures of voters from 50 of Illinois' 102 counties, while the Michigan statute only requires signatures of voters from 10 of Michigan's 83 counties. However, it is clear that this difference is of no constitutional significance. The following portion of the Moore v. Ogilvie opinion is as true...
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...as constitutionally indistinguishable from the Illinois statute as a Michigan statute was recently held to be in Socialist Workers Party v. Hare, 304 F.Supp. 534 (E.D.Mich.1969). Indeed, a comparison of the distributive requirements in the New York and Illinois statutes may well reveal the ......
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