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Election Law Commons

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State and Local Government Law

Michigan Law Review

Municipalities

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Full-Text Articles in Election Law

Sayler Land Co. V. Tulare Lake Basin Water Storage District: Opening The Floodgates In Local Special Government Elections, Michigan Law Review Mar 1974

Sayler Land Co. V. Tulare Lake Basin Water Storage District: Opening The Floodgates In Local Special Government Elections, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

In judicial review of the constitutionality of representational structures at the local governmental level, each citizen's constitutional right to equal representation must be reconciled with the need for flexibility in designing local structures. Last term, in Salyer Land Co. v. Tulare Lake Basin Water Storage District, the Supreme Court faced this problem in the context of a water storage district. It upheld a statute that both restricted the franchise in the election of district directors to district landowners and allocated votes on the basis of the assessed value of the land owned by each voter. This Note will first …


Constitutional Law--Equal Protection--Property Ownership Qualifications On The Right To Vote In Special Municipal Elections--Cipriano V. City Of Houma, Michigan Law Review Apr 1969

Constitutional Law--Equal Protection--Property Ownership Qualifications On The Right To Vote In Special Municipal Elections--Cipriano V. City Of Houma, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Plaintiff, a resident of Houma, Louisiana, who owned no real property, brought a class action seeking to prevent the city from issuing utility revenue bonds approved by a vote of the property taxpayers at a special election. He argued that the Louisiana statute restricting the right to vote in such elections to property owners was unconstitutional. Plaintiff relied on Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, in which the Supreme Court declared that Virginia's required payment of poll taxes for voting in general elections was a violation of the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment. Harper, he claimed, …