Federal judge to decide Conyers' ballot status Friday

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2. Although Conyers seems to have collectede enough signatures of registered voters

to qualify for the ballot, Michigan law further requires that the petition-circulators themselves be registered voters, and Conyers fell afoul of this requirement

The state does have a suitable interest, in ensuring that enough registered voters support placing a candidate on the ballot, before the candidate is added to the ballot -- for otherwise, it is quite plausible that the ballot could run to many pages of pseudo-candidates for whom there was no measurable support

What is in question, as I understand it, is whether requiring petition-circulators to be registered voters: the argument against the requirement is that it unduly burdens political expression (expressed through the act of circulating petitions), without there being a suitable government interest justifying the burden

Courts have, in the past, taken the view, that requiring petition-circulators to be registered voters unduly burdens freedom of political expression, so this argument is not a recent sudden novelty imagined by Conyers and his lawyers