New State Law Blocks Third Party Ballot

Unless a suit in Federal District Court succeeds, a new Michigan election law will eliminate some minority political parties from appearing on the November ballot.
The new law, Public Act 94, dictates that "third parties" must not only successfully petition to appear on the primary ballot, they must also receive one-tenth of 1% of the primary vote in the new "party qualification section" of the ballot in order to qualify for the November election.
Past law in Michigan required only the collection of 18,000 signatures of registered voters for a party to be placed on the ballot.
The state enacted this legislation rather than convert voting machines, a conversion easily made in Massachusetts and New York in order to accommodate more political parties.
In the August 3 primary, all five third parties combined received less votes than they needed individually to appear on the November ballot. Each party needed 3,500 votes in order to qualify.
A federal suit filed prior to the primary by the ACLU on behalf of the Communist Party, the Socialist Labor party, the Socialist Workers Party, the Human Rights Party and the Communist Labor Party will hopefully overturn what appears to be an attempt by the two-party system to squelch the views of those who don't toe the two-party line.
The federal suit, besides questioning the basis of the law itself also questions the lack of a provision which would have educated the electorate to the new law, as well as the timing of the institution of the new law-which occurred toward the end of the petitioning period of the old election law.
The Communist Labor Party has also filed a state suit charging that violations of the new law were committed by state and local election authorities, and that these violations prevented the CLP from accumulating enough votes to qualify for the November ballot.
If anything, this new election law, the first of its type in the country, shows the cracks in a two-party electoral system which seeks to preserve its power by forcing third parties off the ballot. A political party's right to appear on the ballot bears directly on the citizen's right to vote. The SUN commends the ACLU suit which seeks to overturn this unconstitutional piece of legislation that would disenfranchise the voters of Michigan rather than adding more room on the voting machine.

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The Sun regrets the statement that appeared in its May 20, 1976, edition which read: "In fact Sexton (Ronald Sexton, who is running for re-election to the Detroit Police Officers Association presidency) has often publicly referred to the city' black citizens as 'jungle bunnies' . . ." However, according to Mayor Young, in an interview conducted by the Sun last October, Tuebor, "the DPOA's official publication, has consistently referred to black citizens of this city as 'jungle bunnies'." Sorry, Ron, we thought it was you who said Detroit's citizens were "jungle bunnies." We should have known it was the DPOA's official publication, Tuebor, and not you.