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MICHIGAN: ELECTION IN THE COURTS [Henry Payne 10/21 10:49 AM]

Wednesday’s federal court legal bombshell overturning long-held Michigan election law disallowing ballots filed in the wrong precinct is the latest effort by Democrats to decide Election 2004 in the courts, not the voting booth.

Distrustful of the democratic process, Democrats have filed a blizzard of legal challenges to affect election outcomes this year. The first came in response to Ward Connerly’s 2004 Michigan Civil Rights Initiative. Fearing that the popular ballot proposal - designed to end racial preferences in government hiring – would pass, Michigan Democrats waged a legal war against the proposal’s language to prevent its ever appearing on the ballot. The tactic worked. After months of legal delays that helped stymie Connerly’s ability to collect signatures and raise money, the initiative’s supporters postponed the measure until the 2006 election.

(For their part, state Republicans did not endorse the initiative either - fearing that it might increase black voter turnout, thus hurting Bush’s election chances. Go figure.)

On a second legal front, Democrats sued to prevent Ralph Nader from appearing on Michigan’s ballot. Partisan Democrats on the state elections panel sided with Nader opponents (surprise!), but a Michigan appeals court has upheld Nader. The case remains in dispute (http://www.freep.com/news/politics/ballot4e_20040904.htm). Once again, the intention is to prevent voters from exercising their democratic choice of candidate - this time out of fear that Nader would siphon votes from Kerry.

Now comes the “wrong precinct” stunner. As in Florida, when Democrats “judge shopped” to Florida’s Supreme Court to get a favorable ruling in 2000, legal sources say Michigan Democrats judge-shopped to Clinton-appointee and U.S. District Judge David Lawson under an obscure provision of federal court law. Predictably, Lawson gave Democrats a favorable ruling – throwing Michigan into potential vote-counting chaos just two weeks before election day.