Who screwed this up?

[pdq]

The nonsense is the ruling.

They need to bring it to the MI Supreme Court, and now.

[JoeH]

pdq wrote:
The nonsense is the ruling.

They need to bring it to the MI Supreme Court, and now.

What is that court looking like these days? The right has been getting some reactionary activists elected to courts like this one.

[DeusxMac]

This demonstrates the inherent drawbacks of combining:

1. All capital letters

2. Justified text - "A common type of text alignment in print media is "justification", where the spaces between words and between glyphs or letters are stretched or compressed in order to align both the left and right ends of consecutive lines of text."

[pdq]

From a link in the NYT paper, to this, a staff report from the Michigan Bureau of Elections:

On August 18, 2022, Citizens to Support MI Women and Children (Citizens) submitted a challenge to the form of the petition. The challenge did not call individual signatures into question but instead challenged the entirety of the drive. Citizens argued that the Board should reject the petition because minimal spacing throughout the text of the constitutional amendment language within the substance of the petition resulted in series of words being condensed into long, nonsensical letter combinations. Citizens argued that a petition cannot insert nonexistent words into the Constitution.

In response to Citizens’ allegations that the minimal spacing renders the petition unreadable and the words “gibberish,” RFFA provides an affidavit from the printer of the petition, stating that spaces are included in the full text of the proposed constitutional amendment. Moreover, RFFA states that people can read and understand the proposed amendment notwithstanding any issues with word spacing, and those who signed the petition understood it.

As the staff report points out:

The RFFA petition includes the same letters, arranged in the same order, as the petition conditionally approved at the March 23rd Board meeting, accounting for the removal of the word “the” which was the subject of the conditional approval. Certain portions of the petition have smaller spaces between words; the spacing between words in some instances appears similar to the spacing between letters within words. The Michigan Election Law is silent on the amount of space that must be between letters and words in a petition. Section 482 sets strict requirements for the size of the petition sheet and the various font sizes for the headings, the 100-word summary, and the full text of the amendment. MCL 168.482. It does not provide requirements as to spacing or “kerning”—the term for adjusting the space between characters in proportional font.

…and so, also finding the number of signatures was well above needed, the staff report bottom line?

Staff recommends that the Board approve certification of this petition.

But from there, it apparently went to the 4 member Board, resulting in a straight party-line vote, with 2 Repubs rejecting the staff report recommendation, and two Dems voting to certify. So being deadlocked, the vote failed.

Fortunately, it is in fact being brought to the Michigan Supreme Court, where Dem appointments hold a slim majority. I’m thinking this move to block the amendment will backfire, big-time.

[Numo]

Speedy wrote:
[quote=mattkime]
They wanted to find a technicality and they did. Its BS.

Not really, not when it occurs repeatedly. A spacing error at the end of a line? Ok, that’s a technicality. They must have hired an antiabortion expert in Quark.
I was wondering how they made the word spacing so tight.

[JoeH]

pdq wrote:
Fortunately, it is in fact being brought to the Michigan Supreme Court, where Dem appointments hold a slim majority. I’m thinking this move to block the amendment will backfire, big-time.

Michigan Supreme Court judges are elected. Vacancies from death or resignations are temporarily filled by appointments until the next general election.

[Lemon Drop]

pdq wrote:
From a link in the NYT paper, to this, a staff report from the Michigan Bureau of Elections:

On August 18, 2022, Citizens to Support MI Women and Children (Citizens) submitted a challenge to the form of the petition. The challenge did not call individual signatures into question but instead challenged the entirety of the drive. Citizens argued that the Board should reject the petition because minimal spacing throughout the text of the constitutional amendment language within the substance of the petition resulted in series of words being condensed into long, nonsensical letter combinations. Citizens argued that a petition cannot insert nonexistent words into the Constitution.

In response to Citizens’ allegations that the minimal spacing renders the petition unreadable and the words “gibberish,” RFFA provides an affidavit from the printer of the petition, stating that spaces are included in the full text of the proposed constitutional amendment. Moreover, RFFA states that people can read and understand the proposed amendment notwithstanding any issues with word spacing, and those who signed the petition understood it.

As the staff report points out:

The RFFA petition includes the same letters, arranged in the same order, as the petition conditionally approved at the March 23rd Board meeting, accounting for the removal of the word “the” which was the subject of the conditional approval. Certain portions of the petition have smaller spaces between words; the spacing between words in some instances appears similar to the spacing between letters within words. The Michigan Election Law is silent on the amount of space that must be between letters and words in a petition. Section 482 sets strict requirements for the size of the petition sheet and the various font sizes for the headings, the 100-word summary, and the full text of the amendment. MCL 168.482. It does not provide requirements as to spacing or “kerning”—the term for adjusting the space between characters in proportional font.

…and so, also finding the number of signatures was well above needed, the staff report bottom line?

Staff recommends that the Board approve certification of this petition.

But from there, it apparently went to the 4 member Board, resulting in a straight party-line vote, with 2 Repubs rejecting the staff report recommendation, and two Dems voting to certify. So being deadlocked, the vote failed.

Fortunately, it is in fact being brought to the Michigan Supreme Court, where Dem appointments hold a slim majority. I’m thinking this move to block the amendment will backfire, big-time.

I hope you're right. Sounds like a fair and reasonable outcome.

[DeusxMac]

Ammo wrote:
[quote=Speedy]
[quote=mattkime]
They wanted to find a technicality and they did. Its BS.

Not really, not when it occurs repeatedly. A spacing error at the end of a line? Ok, that’s a technicality. They must have hired an antiabortion expert in Quark.
I was wondering how they made the word spacing so tight.
NOT a "spacing error". The text is "Justified". See my* post above - https://forums.macresource.com/read.php?...sg-2769558


*I dealt with these technical issues for a living.

[Acer]

They should submit all supporting documents in Comic Sans.

[AllGold]

I could read it just fine. My only beef is I don't think text should be all caps. EVER. :wink: