Board Stalls Affirmative Action Petition

Backers of a proposed state ban on the use of race and gender in public hiring and university admissions are headed back to court, after a state elections panel Tuesday failed to approve their petitions which sought to place the issue before voters in Nov. 2006.

Only one member of the four-person Board of State Canvassers voted to certify the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative proposal, despite the submission of more than 500,000 signatures collected earlier this year.

The group needs the signatures of 317,757 registered voters to qualify the so-called anti-affirmative action amendment for the ballot. Secretary of State elections staff estimated they had collected more than 450,000 signatures.

But the other board members said they were uncomfortable over allegations the MCRI petition circulators had misled a significant number of those who signed the petition.

The hearing and two overflow offices were jammed with supporters and opponents of the amendment.

Jennifer Gratz, executive director of MCRI and one of the plaintiffs in the University of Michigan admissions cases that ignited the affirmative action debate, said she wasn't surprised by Tuesday's action. MCRI will seek a court order to reverse the board almost immediately, she said.

Gratz called allegations of fraud unfounded.

Opponents called for an investigation, charging that the ballot drive targeted black voters and convinced them to sign the petitions by telling them the ballot issue would preserve affirmative action programs.

In fact, the ballot proposal would prohibit affirmative action programs based on race, gender or national origin.

"There's no way you can get black people to sign a petition against affirmative action without lies and deceit," Johnathon Crutcher, a junior at Detroit's Cody High School, told the board Tuesday.

The opponents cited 122 petition signatures from nine cities with large black populations.

Theirs were among a random sample of 500 signatures state election officials used to determine whether there are enough valid signatures out of the 500,000 collected.

George Washington, attorney for By Any Means Necessary, a group strongly opposed to the initiative, said his group contacted about two-thirds of the 122 petition signers, and all were black. He said the sampling indicates that as many as 25%of those who signed the petitions were deceived.

"We didn't find a single black person who signed this who knew what they were signing," Washington said. "They were told by those who circulated the petitions that it would help affirmative action."

Ruthie Stevenson, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Macomb County branch and an opponent of the petition drive, said she was approached by an MCRI petitioner who, not knowing who she was, told her that the NAACP and Ruthie Stevenson support the ballot initiative.

"I told him I'm Ruthie Stevenson, and I am not in favor of this deplorable petition," she said.

But leaders of the petition drives said they, too, interviewed black voters who signed the petitions who told them they knew exactly what they were signing.

Attorney Stephen Safranek, testifying for the MCRI, said the petition drive had collected such an overabundance of signatures that a challenge is futile, and that opponents were attempting to delay and mire the ballot drive in controversy.

Much of the six hours of debate focused on whether the board has the authority to conduct an investigation -- with subpoena power -- into possible misrepresentation by petition circulators.

Attorney General Mike Cox issued an opinion that the board does not have such authority, but Democratic board member Doyle O'Connor repeatedly disputed Cox's ruling.

Republican board member Lyn Bankes abstained on the final vote to certify the petitions, saying there were too many doubts about the validity of signatures.

Bankes, a former state representative, said she will ask the Legislature to investigate charges that black voters were lied to about the intent of the ballot issue.

The trip to court will be a return for all parties. Last year, a challenge to the proposed amendment ultimately was resolved in favor of MCRI, but too late to collect signatures for the 2004 election.

Deputy Attorney General Gary Gordon told the board Tuesday that the limits on the board spelled out in Cox's opinion were "not a close call" legally.

The board's jurisdiction is clear and is limited to questions about the form of petitions and whether signers were registered voters, he said.

Contact DAWSON BELL at 313-222-6604 or dbell@freepress.com.