MI residents still will be allowed to use the state’s long-standing option of voting for an entire slate of one party’s candidates with a single mark in the November election, barring an unlikely intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Schuette’s brief with the court says the law does not discriminate because it applies to all voters.
Schuette and other Republicans say straight-party voting, which is banned in 40 states, represents poor civic engagement, and voters should consider each race and its candidates individually.
The panel sided with U.S. District Court Judge Gershwin Drain’s injunction blocking the MI law that bans straight-ticket voting.
The filing asks the Supreme Court to stay the preliminary injunction pending a “merits decision” by the Court of Appeals.
U.S. District Judge Gershwin Drain halted the GOP-backed law in July, saying an increase in long lines would have disproportionately burdened blacks in the November election.
Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette says a response from the justices is needed by next Thursday so election officials can start printing ballots.
The Michigan Public Radio Network’s Rick Pluta reports on Bill Schuette’s plan to appeal his straight-ticket voting case to the Supreme Court.
Lower courts have ruled the ban violates the rights of minority voters in cities who are most likely to use the option. To change it injects politics into the process, as critics believe the process would slow down voting and lead to fewer voters in urban, Democratic areas.
In his opinion, Drain cited a report by demographer Kurt Metzger, which found that of 15 MI cities with a 65 percent or higher rate of straight-party voting, only two had a majority of white citizens.
The deadline for finalizing ballots is one week from today.
“… The preliminary injunction keeps in place the law of MI for the past 125 years allowing straight-party voting”.
“Bill Schuette is a desperate man who will stop at nothing to waste taxpayer dollars and jeopardize the fairness and integrity of our elections, all in an effort to please his big-money GOP donors, like Ron Weiser, who also happens to be running for statewide office himself”.
The three judges – all appointed by either President Barack Obama or President Bill Clinton – said their ruling “will merely require MI to use the same straight-party procedure that it has used since 1891”.
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Republicans who want to end straight-ticket voting in MI are running out of legal options.
