Senator Wants to Move Ballot Duties to Secretary of StateThe Detroit News: Politics/Government
www.detnews.com
By Amy F. Bailey, Associated Press
Sat, Jul 30, 2005
LANSING -- A week after a state elections board deadlocked over whether to put a measure banning some affirmative action programs on the fall ballot, a senator said Friday he is working on a bill to take away the panel's powers.
Sen. Alan Cropsey, who was a Board of State Canvassers member from 1999-2001, said the four-member panel has recently overstepped its authority and made decisions based on politics.
The board failed to either approve or reject petition signatures for a constitutional amendment that would ban the use of race and gender preferences in university admissions and government hiring last week. The group that gathered the signatures, called the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, said they will ask the courts to certify the signatures.
State elections officials reviewed a sample of 500 signatures and found 450 of them were valid. Based on that, state Elections Bureau recommended the petitions be certified.
"It is outrageous and inconceivable that the Board of Canvassers continues to thumb its nose at the law and ignore the advice of nonpartisan legal counsel and the Bureau of Elections by refusing to approve valid voter petitions," Cropsey, a DeWitt Republican, said in a statement.
It wasn't the first time the board -- made up of two Republicans and two Democrats -- has deadlocked on an issue, leaving decisions up to the courts.
Last fall, the canvassers failed to decide whether to put on the ballot a measure limiting marriage to one man and one woman after Democrats said they were concerned the proposal's wording was confusing.
A state appeals court later approved the measure for the ballot and ruled that the elections board breached its "legal duty to certify the petition when it was in the proper form and had sufficient signatures."
George Washington, an attorney for a group fighting the anti-affirmative action measure, said Cropsey's bill would prevent groups opposed to ballot measures from having the chance to challenge them.
"They want to be able to have people put any piece of junk on the ballot without anyone taking a look at what it says," Washington said in a telephone interview. "It's like getting rid of courts because they don't like the decisions."
But Cropsey said the Bureau of Elections in the Secretary of State's office could easily take over the responsibilities of the canvassers. The move would "protect the people of Michigan who wish to petition their government for change," he said.
Cropsey announced his legislation a week after Gov. Jennifer Granholm vetoed a bill that would have prevented the canvassers from considering the merits or politics of a ballot proposal when deciding whether to send it to voters.
The Democratic governor said the measure could interfere with the canvassers' ability to review petitions, hold hearings on complaints and conduct investigations of petitions.
Granholm spokeswoman Liz Boyd said Friday any proposed change to the Board of State Canvassers must have bipartisan support and include a mechanism to investigate allegations of fraud when signatures are collected.
Much of the debate at last week's canvassers meeting focused on whether there should be an investigation into the way MCRI gathered signatures. Opponents said many black people were tricked into signing a petition they thought would protect affirmative action and civil rights.
Republican canvasser Lyn Bankes of Livonia wants either the board or state Legislature to investigate the group's petition-gathering methods. Doyle O'Connor, a Detroit Democrat, is asking for a probe by the secretary of state or the attorney general.
Cropsey's bill would not completely eliminate the board, which only could be done with a constitutional amendment, spokesman Ari Adler said. But by transferring the board's powers, the board would be "rather ceremonial," Adler said.
On the Net:
Michigan Legislature: http://www.legislature.mi.gov
Michigan Secretary of State's office: http://www.michigan.gov/sos
Copyright © 2005 The Detroit News
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