A group that saw its proposal to require voters to prove their citizenship status before voting in Michigan blocked from the Nov. 3 ballot is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse that decision immediately.
On Monday, Aug. 31, Americans for Citizen Voting filed an emergency appeal to Justice Brett Kavanaugh asking for an injunction to be issued within days ordering the Michigan Secretary of State's office to declare the constitutional amendment proposal proper and order it placed on the November ballot ahead of the Sept. 4 meeting of the Board of State Canvassers to finalize the listing.
The group said in its filing to Kavanaugh that it had asked the Michigan Supreme Court to take up its emergency appeal but had received no indication it would
do so even with the deadline fast approaching.
Under the court's rules, Kavanaugh could issue an injunction on his own if he chose to do, refer the issue to the whole court for consideration as often happens in high-profile cases or turn it down without comment.
On Aug. 24, during a marathon session, the board deadlocked 2-2 along partisan lines over whether the group had provided enough valid petition signatures to place the proposal before the voters, effectively barring it. The group, however, argued before the board − as it did in its petition to Kavanaugh − that it had taken every effort called for to ensure that enough signatures were valid, including getting affidavits from voters whose signatures may not have matched those in the state's Qualified Voter File.
The group argued that the board waited more than five months to raise questions about the signatures and then relied on a small sample the group does not consider representative of the whole. The state Bureau of Elections, however, said that sample of 1,000 signatures − out of some 700,000 submitted, 260,000 more than were required −indicated several problems such as mismatched signatures and signatures from people not registered to vote in the municipality in which they were listed.
In the end, there was a partisan split over whether to accept the 11th-hour affidavits amid much legal wrangling. In the petition, the group argues that the decision by the board was arbitrary and effectively disenfranchises the will of hundreds of thousands of Michiganders who signed the petitions.
The proposal seeks to require the state to verify a voter's legal citizenship status through presentation of a passport or birth certificate and remove any suspected noncitizens from state voter rolls during a 45-day time period, mirroring efforts by President Donald Trump and Republicans to crack down on what they insist is rampant voter fraud.
But noncitizen voting in state and federal elections is already illegal and even though there have been some limited cases in which noncitizens have been criminally charged for voting or attempting to vote, the number has been small.Voting rights advocates argue that requirements to present birth certificates or passports in order to register to vote is a disguised effort to make voting more difficult, depressing turnout and in effect disenfranchising voters.
Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @tsspangler. Staff writer Clara Hendrickson contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: US Supreme Court asked to revive proof-of-citizenship plan in Michigan
