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Federal Judge: Michigan's Presidential Primary Law Unconstitutional 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. --------- You can reach Gordon Trowbridge at (202) 662-8738 or gtrowbridge@detnews.com.
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