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Federal Judge: Michigan's Presidential Primary Law Unconstitutional
By Gordon Trowbridge
The Detroit News
Wednesday 26 March 2008
Detroit - A federal judge on Wednesday ruled Michigan's presidential primary
law unconstitutional and blocked the state from giving voter lists from the
Jan. 15 election to the state's major political parties.
U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds agreed with the American Civil Liberties
Union, arguing on behalf of several small political parties, that the law's
provision giving the list of voters' partisan preference only to the Democratic
and Republican parties violated the rights of other parties.
Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer said the ruling may have ended
any chances of a new Democratic election to resolve the ongoing dispute over
the state's delegation to the Democratic National Convention. The state party,
he said, needs the list to ensure that no one who voted in the Republican primary
in January votes in any new Democratic contest, as required under the national
party's rules.
"If the Michigan Democratic Party cannot get the lists, then our friends
at the ACLU may have driven the final nail in the coffin of any re-vote in Michigan,"
Brewer said.
But Hillary Clinton's campaign argues that the ruling now makes a new election
more necessary than ever.
"Michigan will be a key battleground state in November," Clinton
campaign manager Maggie Williams said in a written statement. "Disenfranchising
Michigan voters today will, in the heat of a general election, provide Senator
McCain with a powerful argument to use against the Democratic nominee. We cannot
allow this to happen."
Edmunds, the ACLU lawyers who won the case and the state's top election manager
all agreed that the ruling had no practical impact on the 2008 presidential
campaign. "Nothing I'm going to say or do" affects the results of
the Jan. 15 vote, Edmunds said. "That's the political reality."
"That election is on the history books, and it doesn't disappear because
the law that created it is off the books," Brewer.
Mitt Romney won the Republican primary, and Hillary Clinton won the Democratic
race. The January contest was earlier than allowed by either party; while the
rules violation had little real effect on the GOP race, Democrats are still
embroiled in a debate over how to treat Michigan.
Michigan Republican Party spokesman Bill Nowling said the ruling has no effect
on the party.
"It was never about who had access to the list and who didn't," Nowling
said. "It was about Michigan moving up and playing a significant role in
the nominating process. The ruling doesn't affect that in our eyes."
Chris Thomas, the state's top election official, said even if the judge had
ruled that the list should be made public, the state would have withheld it
from release. The law included a "nonseverability clause," which voided
the entire statute if any part of it was invalidated by the courts. Under that
clause, Thomas said, the state would have kept the list private in order to
protect voters' privacy.
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You can reach Gordon Trowbridge at (202) 662-8738 or gtrowbridge@detnews.com.
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