Those not in the Wolverine state may not appreciate what Michigan voters just dodged.
For 125 years, Michigan election law has included “straight-ticket” voting on the ballot, in which party loyalists could simply fill in one bubble (or one checkbox in the old days) to vote for EVERY Democrat (or Republican, or Libertarian...) on the ballot at once, instead of having to go through and fill out every race one at a time (President...Congress...Senate...Governor...State House...County Commissioner (ahem)...etc etc)
Last fall, the GOP-held legislature pushed through (and GOP Gov. Snyder signed) a law which kills off straight-ticket voting…even though no one from either party had asked them to do so, and in fact Michigan voters had previously rejected an attempt to kill straight-ticket voting back in 2002, with 60% voting to keep it.
In other words, Michigan Democrats and Republicans alike really like having straight-ticket as an option. I don’t have the state-wide numbers, but here in Oakland County in 2012, an even 50% of all 654,000 votes cast were straight ticket (53% Dem, 45% GOP, the other 2% made of 3rd Parties).
The GOP forced the ban last year by attaching a token appropriation to the law, making it un-repealable by the public.
The official reason given was that requiring everyone to fill in each individual race bubble separately would “force the voters to become better informed about the candidates”. Of course, this presumes that the voters aren’t already informed about the candidates, and it also presumes that removing straight-ticket would result in them becoming more informed about them.
While this is theoretically possible, the real reason they passed this law was to try and suppress voter turnout in high-density urban areas...which is to say, Democratic turnout in Detroit, Romulus and Inkster. Making it take 20x longer to fill out a ballot obviously slows things down considerably, and for someone with arthritis, having to fill out 25-30 bubbles instead of 1 can be a literal pain.
Anyway, most Michiganders of both parties have been pretty pissed about this change (Republicans like the convenience of straight-ticket as well), but had for the most part accepted that we were stuck with it.
THANKFULLY, some folks didn’t accept it, and filed a lawsuit...and lo and behold:
A federal judge in Detroit has issued four preliminary injunctions against state election officials, prohibiting Michigan from enforcing a new law that bans straight-ticket voting.
U.S. District Court Judge Gershwin A. Drain issued a 37-page opinion Thursday that said the new law puts a disproportionate burden on African Americans’ right to vote.
“This motion has been pending for seven weeks. Time is of the essence. The election is less than four months away, and election officials need to have adequate opportunity to prepare,” Drain wrote.
Michigan’s Republican-led Legislature approved the elimination of straight-ticket voting in December, with supporters arguing it would encourage a more informed electorate and end a policy holdover from the days of big party bosses.
But the effort seeking an injunction against it — argued orally last week by Mary Ellen Gurewitz and Mark Brewer for the plaintiff, the Michigan chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute — asserts the state’s ban on straight-ticket voting would have disproportionate harm on minority voters in “an election of great consequence” in November.
...“Black voters would have less opportunity to vote,” said Brewer, an attorney at Goodman Acker, citing a study by demographer Kurt Metzger that reports about 75 percent of voters in minority-majority communities, such as Detroit, Romulus and Inkster, vote straight-ticket.
At least 50 percent of voters statewide utilize straight-ticket voting, said Gurewitz, an attorney at Sachs Waldman.
The best part here is the final paragraph:
[Assistant Attorney General Erik Grill, defending the straight-ticket ban] said in Ottawa County, which is 93 percent white, about 60 percent of voters vote straight-ticket. Grill also criticized what he called Metzger’s “cherry-picked” study for focusing on nine out of Michigan’s 83 counties. Ottawa County was not one of them.
In other words, just to be clear, the GOP’s defense of their decision to scrap straight-ticket voting is that it would annoy, irritate and generally make life more difficult for EVERYONE, and therefore isn’t discriminatory. What a winning argument!
Now, here’s the irony of this development: While killing straight-ticket voting almost certainly would have helped out the GOP on state-wide races such as President, Governor, Atty .General, Secretary of State and State Board of Education (which is why they forced it through)...for local races, the outcome really would depend on the demographics of that particular district.
For instance, to use Grill’s “Ottawa County” example, there’s a very good chance that, say, most straight-ticket voters tend to be Republican, in which case getting rid of straight-ticket could very well help out the Democratic candidates down ballot. Even more ironic: My own campaign might very well have better odds of winning here in the Bloomfield/Birmingham area (heavily GOP) without straight-ticket.
Then again, it’s also possible that the loss of both GOP and Dem straight-ticket votes might have resulted in them cancelling each other out...in which case everyone would have been inconvenienced for no reason whatsoever.
In any event, this is a good development overall. Not quite as big as the recent court decisions in Texas and Wisconsin, but pretty big for us here in the Mitten state.