MI residents still may be allowed to use the state’s longstanding straight-party voting option in the November election after a federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected the state’s request to keep intact a new ban on the practice.
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The Michigan Attorney General’s office is planning an emergency appeal, Spokeswoman Andrea Bitely said following the Wednesday, Aug. 17, ruling.
With straight-ticket voting permitted, voters will have the option of supporting a party’s entire slate of candidates by filling in a single circle, instead of filling in individual votes for candidates at different levels of government.
A previous ruling said the ban on the process violates the right to equal protection under the law guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled unanimously to uphold an injunction issued by a federal judge in July that temporarily suspended Michigan’s law that abolished straight-ticket voting. U.S. District Judge Gershwin Drain in Detroit blocked the Republican-backed law last month, saying it would place a “disproportionate burden” on blacks in the November election. The full 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a similar law in Texas.
MI doesn’t allow no-reason absentee voting, early in-person voting, or online or automatic voter registration. But federal Judge Karen Nelson Moore wrote Wednesday that the state “offered only vague and largely unsupported justifications of fostering voter knowledge and engagement”.
“Half of MI voters use it”, said Goodman Acker Attorney Mark Brewer, a former state Democratic leader representing the plaintiffs in the case.
In May, the A. Philip Randolph Institute, a black labor organization labor, filed a lawsuit, arguing the law disproportionately impacts African-Americans, who are more likely to vote a straight-party ticket.
When Snyder signed the legislation in January, he noted concerns that elimination of the straight ticket option could result in longer lines at the polls and asked lawmakers to expand absentee voting options, but that hasn’t happened.
The straight-party voting has been abolished by nine other states in the last 20 years, including Wisconsin and IL.
Unless the appeal is successful, the district court’s July ruling will remain in effect, and voters will have the option of filling in a single “Republican” or “Democrat” bubble come November 8.
“We now have four separate federal judges that have ruled against the Secretary of State and Bill Schuette in their attempt to create confusion, chaos, and long lines at polling places in November.”, Dillon said in a news release.
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Johnson and Schuette appealed, trying to have the ban reinstated.
