The Michigan Supreme Court today voted 4-3 to reverse lower court rulings, and uphold the constitutionality of the Michigan presidential primary law.
Hence, the January 15 primary will proceed after all.
The Michigan Supreme Court, acting on the state's emergency appeal today, reversed the Court of Appeals decision throwing out the state's January 15 presidential primary law.
The decision was four to three, with the solid bloc of four right-wing Republicans (Young, Markman, Corrigan, and Taylor) outvoting the two Democrats (Kelly and Cavanagh) and one disaffected Republican (Weaver).
Michigan Supreme Court justices are nominated by party conventions, so their party labels are widely known, except on the ballot, where they are listed as "nonpartisan".
Election officials, including the Michigan Association of County Clerks, had urged the Secretary of State not to appeal the original court ruling, given the now very limited time left to prepare for the election. It will now be essentially impossible for overseas absentees, such as troops in Iraq, to participate in the election via absentee ballot.
The Republican ballot will include all of the major presidential candidates, but the Democratic ballot will feature only Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd, and Dennis Kucinich. Four other Democratic candidates were able to get their names off the ballot; Kucinich attempted to get his name off the ballot, but missed the deadline.
Michigan Democratic Party chair Mark Brewer filed plans on November 14th to use the results of the presidential primary to allocate delegates, provided the original ruling against the primary was reversed -- which has now happened. These choices essentially guarantee that all, or almost all, of Michigan's Democratic convention delegates will be pledged to Hillary Clinton. However, due to the primary scheduling, the Democratic National Committee's position is that none of those delegates will be seated.
The court majority also upheld the plan to record the party ballot choices of each voter, and provide these lists only to the state chairs of the two major political parties -- that is, not to other parties, factions, or independent voters. Further challenge of this process is expected in federal court, but probably not before the primary.
Michigan does not have party registration, or any way to identify who votes in Democratic or Republican primaries, so the choice-of-ballot process planned for this primary is unusual and controversial in itself.