Verdict in voter records appeal will wait until 2009

No verdict will be reached until early next year in the Michigan Secretary of State’s appeal to a ruling that restored 5,500 purged voter registration records to the state’s rolls, an involved attorney said.

“The last briefing is due on Dec. 22, so the court will probably set a hearing sometime in January,” said Bradley Heard, a senior attorney with the Advancement Project.

The original lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Advancement Project and the law firm of Pepper Hamilton LLP. The group claimed that purging the voter registration files violated the National Voting Rights Act.

Most of the records were removed from the rolls because the voter’s registration card was returned to the Secretary of State as undeliverable.

The judge ruled in agreement with the group on Oct. 13 and ordered the Secretary of State to reinstate the records, but the secretary of state appealed that ruling.

“We still maintain that we are compliant with Michigan and federal election law, and will be looking forward to the court’s decision on it,” secretary of state spokeswoman Kelly Chesney said.

The records all were returned to the rolls before the election, after circuit court judges refused the Secretary of State’s request for a stay of order on the original ruling. But judges said they would not rule on the appeal until after the election.

If the Secretary of State wins the appeal, it will be able to continue the practice of purging records when registration cards are returned to a branch office. It is still unclear whether or not the 5,500 restored names would be taken back off the rolls.

The case has been awaiting trial at the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati since the Secretary of State made the appeal about three weeks before the election.

“We’re a little unclear about why they’re continuing to pursue the appeal, given that the court was pretty clear in its ruling denying the say,” Heard said.

More than 20 voters in East Lansing had to fill out provisional ballots because their names weren’t on the city’s voter list, City Clerk Nicole Evans said. Most of those voters were in campus precincts, but they were not voters whose names had been purged, Evans said.

“Those names would have shown up before the lists were printed,” she said. “It was done prior to the election.”

The ACLU lawsuit is not the only time this year the Secretary of State’s practice of cleaning the rolls has come under fire. The New York Times reported in October that 33,000 records have been removed since Aug. 1, probably by accident. Federal law forbids removing voters within the 90 days prior to an election unless they have died, notified officials they have moved from the state or been declared unfit to vote.

The article stated similar problems had occurred in at least eight other states.