AG Takes Fight Against Straight-Party Voting to U.S. Supreme Court

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette is taking his fight to end straight-party voting in the state to the U.S. Supreme Court after the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the full court won’t hear his appeal of an Aug. 17 decision by a three-judge panel upholding a lower court decision that upheld a lower court ruling blocking a state law that banned the practice.

Schuette spokeswoman Andrea Bitely said Friday that an emergency application for a stay of the panel’s ruling asks for a decision by Sept. 8 “in order for election officials to move forward with printing ballots for the November elections,” the Detroit Free Press reports.

The panel sided with U.S. District Court Judge Gershwin Drain’s injunction blocking the Michigan law that bans straight-ticket voting.

Drain had said a ban on straight-ticket voting violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act, and would disproportionately burden African-American voters because it would increase the time required to vote in districts that may already be long.

“In the face of this burden, the state has offered only vague and largely unsupported justifications of fostering voter knowledge and engagement,” 6th Circuit Judges Karen Moore, Ronald Lee Gilman and Jane Branstetter Stranch wrote in the ruling.

In declining to hear the appeal, the 6th Circuit sent the matter back to the three judges.

The Republican-led Michigan Legislature banned straight-party voting, as 40 other states have done, and Republican Gov. Rick Snyder signed the legislation in January.

In a news release, Michigan Democratic Party chairman Brandon Dillon called on Schuette's to end his “crusade” against 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,” Dillon said.

The three judges — all appointed by either President Barack Obama or President Bill Clinton — said their ruling “will merely require Michigan to use the same straight-party procedure that it has used since 1891.” Drain is also an Obama appointee.

The Michigan debate is part of a national conversation over voting rights laws, most of them requiring voter identification, that some say disenfranchise minority voters and could swing the outcome of this year’s general election. Last month, a federal appeals court struck down a voter ID law in North Carolina, saying it was “passed with racially discriminatory intent.” The full 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a similar law in Texas.

In a brief arguing for a stay of Drain’s ruling, Assistant Michigan Attorney General Denise Baron wrote that “the issues brought in this case are important election issues of first impression that have statewide impact, and without a stay, the defendant — and the citizens of the state of Michigan — will be irreparably harmed by not having laws passed by its elected representatives enforced.”

In his opinion, Drain cited a report by demographer Kurt Metzger, which found that of 15 Michigan cities with a 65 percent or higher rate of straight-party voting, only two had a majority of white citizens. Communities with a 75 percent or higher rate of straight-party voting had a majority of African-American residents.

Metzger was hired to do the research by Mark Brewer, the former head of the Michigan Democratic Party, which had opposed the ban on straight-ticket voting.

However, supporters of the ban said eliminating the straight-party option would result in more informed voters.

In a court filing, Schuette argued that requiring voters to fill out individual bubbles, rather than a single oval at the top of the ballot, “does not impinge the right to vote but arguably expands that right by having the voter review the entire ballot.”

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.

Michigan doesn’t allow no-reason absentee voting, early in-person voting, or online or automatic voter registration.

Photo by Sean Hackbarth via Flickr Commons