Secretary of State programs cited

BY DAVID ASHENFELTER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

The American Civil Liberties Union and a national student group have sued Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land to halt two statewide voter purging programs that they say could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of state voters, including many college students, before the November presidential election.

"With Michigan set to be one of the most important battleground states in this election and turnout predicted to be the highest in state history, we are going to do everything we can to make sure ... that nobody is illegally purged from the voter rolls," ACLU Michigan director Kary Moss said in a statement.

The suit was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Detroit. No hearings have been set on the suit, which seeks a preliminary injunction to halt the programs.

The other plaintiff in the suit is the United States Student Association, a nonprofit group that has a Michigan field director whose duties include organizing voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts.

Secretary of State spokeswoman Kelly Chesney said Land hasn't been served with the complaint. But based on news media 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's licenses in other states instead of issuing confirmation notices and following procedures required by the voter registration act.

The suit said that program removes about 180,000 voters yearly.

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 other defendants are state elections director Christopher Thomas and Ypsilanti City Clerk Frances McMullan.

Contact DAVID ASHENFELTER at dashenfelter@freepress.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report.