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Michigan Common Sense Party

Michigan Live: Michigan third parties sue to bring back a voting practice banned 131 years ago

“The Michigan Common Sense Party and the Libertarian Party of Michigan are now suing to bring it back, arguing in a lawsuit filed last week in the Michigan Court of Claims that the 131-year-old ban “affords an unfair advantage to the two major parties over new and minor party rivals” and “deprives voters of the opportunity to join together in new and minor parties to advance positions that are unrepresented by the major parties.”

Michigan Advance: Minor parties in Michigan are suing to allow fusion voting, calling current law anti-competition

“The argument here is that a state cannot claim to respect the fundamental right to vote while maintaining a system that artificially narrows voter choice, weakens minor parties, and forces voters into a “major party, wasted vote, or abstain” dilemma,” Timmer continued in his press release, calling the litigation a question of expanding voting rights. “It asks whether the promise of a fundamental right to vote includes the right to cast a meaningful vote that reflects not just which candidate a voter reluctantly prefers, but which political association, party, and set of values the voter affirmatively chooses to support.”

Detroit Free Press: Anti-Trump, former Republicans creating new ‘Common Sense’ political party in Michigan

“Jeff Timmer, a former state Republican Party executive director who left the party in response to its embrace of former President Donald Trump and has been an operative with the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, said this week the Michigan Common Sense Party is intended to be a home for people who don’t necessarily agree with Democrats on policy but neither accept Republican extremism.

Others involved in the project are Bob LaBrant, former vice president and general counsel at the state Chamber of Commerce, and former U.S. Rep. Dave Trott, R-Birmingham — both of whom also broke with the party over Trump and his followers’ views and rejection of traditional GOP norms. Former U.S. Rep. Joe Schwarz, R-Battle Creek, is part of the effort as well”.

Michigan Advance: New: Former Republicans seek to create new centrist party and utilize fusion voting in Michigan

“We would be cross-nominating either Republicans or Democrats who fit the center-left or center -right.” he said. “I’ve had so many people tell me, ‘I can’t support the Republicans anymore, but I just can’t support the Democrats, either.’ It’s just part of their DNA. And as long as we continue to live in a zero-sum game where it either has to be a Republican or a Democrat, it’s just an implausible scenario going forward in my mind, that the pro-democracy coalition that’s formed in Michigan and then supported Gov. [Gretchen] Whitmer and [President] Joe Biden in the last three elections will continue.”

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