In the michigan petition to amend their constitution to protect a right
to abortion, a committee of 4 people divided 2 to 2 on partisan lines
whether to approve ... something... and without a majority, it was not
approved to be included in November's ballot. (The deadline for such
decisions was yesterday, to give time for printing or settign up voting machines.)

A suit brought against the committee was decided by MichSC.

Acc. to one justice, the issue was strict compliance vs. substantial performance and Michigan's rule is strict compliance, but is there a
reasonable argument that the law says strict compliannce not and very
strict compliance?

Or that "text" refers to the letters more than to the spaces. and that
strict compliance is achieved even when spaces are missing from 2 lines
out of 60 in the petition.

An image of the relevant excerpt is on page 21 of https://www.courts.michigan.gov/4a5828/siteassets/case-documents/briefs/msc/2022-2023/164760/164760-2022-09-08-or.pdf

This is the whole petition, minus a place to sign. When the cursor is
over the text, it has a magically appearing button to enlarge it. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/19/us/politics/michigan-abortion-amendment.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article

It looks to me like all of it has all the appropriate spaces except two
lines:

Article 1 (1), in its second line there are 12 missing spaces (plus a
couple that should have followed commas, but the commas separate the
words adquately),

And Article 1 (3), has one such line in the 4-line paragrah. (There are
9 missing spaces plus 2 commas that should have preceded spaces.)

Both of these lines still seem easy enough to read. Does that matter?
Also, no one who signs will insist on reading every line. Does that
matter at all?

So afaict that's 2 lines out of 60. Is that strict compliance, or
perhaps the use of "text" refers to the letters and not the spaces?

(Until computers, spaces were not characters to me, and maybe to
everyone? They were places you did not write. Even on a typewriter, they
were areas you skipped over. Only the pen or the typewriter keys
created text.)

--
I think you can tell, but just to be sure:
I am not a lawyer.

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