Civil rights groups who challenged the law said the ballot option is used mainly by black voters who tend to vote straight Democrat and outlawing straight-ticket voting would have the effect of making voting more hard in majority black precincts.
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The U.S. Supreme Court has denied a request to hear an emergency appeal over Michigan’s new law that bans straight-ticket voting, allowing the straight-ticket option to appear on ballots in the November 8 election.
Straight-ticket voting allows voters to choose all the candidates from a political party with a single action.
The justices left in place a decision by a federal district judge in MI who in July suspended a law that abolished straight-ticket voting, the practice of using one mark to vote for all candidates from one party, finding that it would disproportionately affect black voters.
In the brief Friday morning order denying the stay request, in which the justices gave no reasoning for their decision, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito noted that they would have granted the stay.
So did the Supreme Court.
And, as is always the case when MI laws are challenged, I have gone to court to defend state law, “the post reads”.
The nine other states that permit straight-ticket voting are Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah, according to the NCSL. Drain pointed to evidence that as many as three-quarters of the state’s black voters use the straight-party ballot, compared with a 50 percent rate for all voters.
Forty other states prohibit straight-party voting. “They have other ways that people can vote and in MI we don’t have any of those things”, Brewer said.
The challengers presented “unrebutted evidence in the record demonstrating that [the law] will increase the time that it takes to vote, particularly in African-American communities where straight-party voting is prominent and where lines are often already long”, wrote Circuit Judge Karen Nelson Moore.
The three-judge 6th Circuit panel that declined to intervene immediately will next fully consider the state’s appeal of U.S. District Judge Gershwin Drain’s injunction, the outcome of which will affect future elections.
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He said long lines at the polls would violate the rights of disabled voters, as well as African-American voters, who historically have a higher rate of using the straight-party option.
