Ethics

Voting Rights Victory in Michigan

By Ed Brayton

The ACLU won a key voting rights lawsuit on Monday when U.S. District Judge Stephen Murphy ruled that the state of Michigan had illegally purged voters from the state's central voter file based upon returned mail and on getting a driver's license in another state. See the full ruling here. It should be noted that Murphy is a Republican, nominated by George W. Bush for the district court and for the appeals court bench (his appeals court nomination was blocked by Democrats).

The case challenged two practices put in place by Sec. of State Terri Lynn Land (a Republican who is angling to run for governor in 2 years) for removing voters from the Qualified Voter File (QVF). The first was that they automatically removed anyone from the rolls if the voter card that was mailed to the new registrant came back returned. The second was that they automatically removed anyone from the rolls if they got a driver's license in another state. In an interesting coincidence, the cooperating attorneys in this case for the ACLU were from the Detroit office of Pepper Hamilton, the same firm that handled the Dover case.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on October 14, 2008 (boomark / email).