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TechnoratiACLU, Student Group Sue Michigan Officials Over Voter Purging Programs
The ACLU and a national student group have sued Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land to halt two statewide voter purging programs that they say could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of state voters before the November presidential election.
![[]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/votingrights.jpg "votingrights.jpg")
"We have repeatedly advised Secretary Land's office that these voter purge programs are unlawful, yet they have refused to bring their practices into compliance," said Bradley Heard, senior attorney with the Advancement Project, which joined the ACLU in the lawsuit.
The suit was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Detroit. No hearings have been set on the suit which requests a preliminary injunction to halt the programs.
There was no immediate comment from the Secretary of State's Office.
Secretary of State spokeswoman Kelly Chesney said Land hasn't been served with the complaint.
But based on press reports, she said "it appears these groups are challenging laws that have been on the books since 1975."
One of them the Michigan's Motor Voter law, served as a model for the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which the ACLU cited in the suit, she said.
The groups say one program immediately cancels the registrations of voters who obtain driver licenses in other states instead of issuing confirmation notices and following procedures required by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. The suit said that program removes an estimated 180,000 voters annually.
A second program requires local clerks to nullify the registrations of newly registered voters when their original voter identifications cards are returned as undeliverable by postal authorities. The groups said Detroit elections officials remove about 30,000 voters annually through the program.
"The state of Michigan is breaking the law," said Meredith Bell-Platts, staff counsel with the ACLU Voting Rights Project. "With the election just weeks away, the effect of these undemocratic purges could make all the difference in deciding who becomes our next president."
The other plaintiff in the suit is the United States Student Association. Defendants are state elections director Christopher Thomas and Ypsilanti City Clerk Frances McMullan.
The suit was assigned to U.S. District Judge Stephen Murphy.
7 Comments so far
Show AllAlcohol and drug use can progress into abuse and addition so insidiously that people often do not realize their drinking or drugging has become a real problem.
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lauran
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Perhaps a frustrated voter will snap and kill a secretary of state for taking away the vote so many veterans fought for; as told to us in the fables leading into all these lovely patriotic wars.
The lack of proper laws and legal procedures for the connected, rich and powerful will lead to vigilante action. Perhaps this is the goal to justify spying on EVERYBODY and jailing ANY opposition.
Gene Therapy
Voter purging, a Republican offensive, is in progress now in "toss-up" (purple) states.
200 hundred years to get this right, and you Americans still don't have your sxxx together. It's a joke.
Here in Canada, it's all simple PAPER.
We walk into the polling station, rarely wait over a few minutes, get our PAPER, with the names of the candidates, go to the booth, mark our choice with an X, go back to the registration desk, with our PAPER folded for privacy, they tear of their receipt, give it back to us, and we deposit it in a box.
All PAPER ballots are counted by hand, witnessed, and verified by all parties, and the tally is passed on to elections Canada.
Very rarely, if ever, is there a dispute. If it is very close, there is a recount, and that settles it.
Results are ready by the next day, if not sooner, and a victor is declared.
This is not brain surgery folks.
Yes but can you give lucrative contracts to high-tech companies affiliated with the party in power? No? How quaint.
Joe
Everything is going according to plan. This economic collapse, the vast array of election irregularities which have not been corrected between elections, all of this is exactly what Cheney et al have been choreographing for years. Google "Directive 51" which Bush signed in May of '07. The very disasters which this pre-martial law directive speculates about are the things that are being put in place. Will there be an "election" in November? It's anybody's guess. If there is, will it be legitimate? If it is will there be an inauguration? These are the questions the press should be asking. These are the questions which americans are being distracted from by the obscene Sarah Palin hoo hah.
I always loved the circus when I was a child.
c'mon people.. if it were my vote being "purged" in such an arbitrary manner,never mind attempting to get it it re- instated as valid, so close to the election.
i would be screaming blue bloody murder, but i guess no one would hear me.. because they have their ears plugged with an ipod, or a iphone.. gettin the latest mind numbing propaganda "hot off the presses" of the MIM (military/industrial/media) machine.
funny how the task of rounding up and allocating 300+ billions of dollars, to steady the nerves of the elite money'd ,who not only just finished a near 8 year run of obscene profits (coincidentally the length of bushes presidency),screamming "de-regulate", as they paid themselves 400x the average "worker's" wage in stock options and bonuses and now have that plunder safely out of reach in "money havens", took less than 2 weeks..yes, funny how it has been what, 30- 40 years we have been hearing about how expensive it would be if everyone had basic healthcare paid nationally by taxes?..
funny, i feel very ill...