By John Bebow - November 30, 2007
So much for the secret ballot, independent voting, and keeping valuable public records in the public domain.
In a 4-3 decision issued on the eve of Thanksgiving, the Michigan Supreme Court struck down two lower court rulings and essentially gave away the coveted lists of voters, their names, their addresses, and their party preference in the January presidential primary.
The Michigan Democratic Party and Michigan Repubilcan Party will be the sole beneficiaries of this information. They'll get your voting records for free, even though we taxpayers will spend $10 million to hold the election. Worse yet, we citizens don't have any such access to the voter records. Instead, the records are the exclusive property of the political parties.
The Center for Michigan recently opined why this hijacking of the voting records only increases bitter partisanship in Michigan.
Most media reports on this controversy didn't seem to have room for some of the more outrageous finer points in the Supreme Court majority opinion:
- The political parties are serving your best interests. The "predominant role that political parties serve in our system of government is informing the public about candidates and ballot proposals and facillitating public debate." Question: when was the last time you truly felt informed by the bombastic party mailings and radio and television ads during election season?
- Because the political parties are serving a public purpose, it's constitutional for the Legislature to appropriate funds to hold the election and then hand over the records to the parties because this is not an appropriation of public resources for a private purpose.
The best argument came in a dissenting opinion by Justice Michael F. Cavanagh:
"The very idea of supplying lists of voters to private parties, when the voters must either be on the list or not vote, strikes me as an abuse of the elective franchise."
Political consultant Mark Grebner, who brought the lawsuit challenging the parties' hijacking of the voter lists, summed it up in a conversation with the Center for Michigan:
"Just giving public money to the political parties is legitimate now, according to this decision. Maybe the Republican Party can take the northbound tolls on the Mackinac Bridge and the Democratic Party can take the southbound tolls?"
So, Michigan voters, enjoy your Scarlett letter at the polls in January and beyond. No matter which way you vote, the parties, through their exclusive access to the voting records, will label you and target you.
5 Comments
What ever happened to the privacy of the polling booth? I remember pulling the lever and having the curtains close behind me and my vote being cast as I pulled the lever a second time and opened the curtains.
I probably won't vote in the primary as I have no intention of letting either political party know what my current preference may be. Nor do I wish to get any more of their junk mail in my mailbox now or in the future. And I certainy don't want them calling me any more than they do already.
The Michigan Legislature seems to have a propensity lately for passing legislation that undermines the public trust. First was the primary election bills, then the indecision on the budget and now that a budget is passed they can't seem to reverse something that absolutely no one wants, the service tax.
The Michigan Supreme Court had the opportunity to right the primary election wrong but refused to do so. I hope someone, or some organization, has the resources to take that decision to a federal court and obtain a constitutional decision.
Just another example of how all levels of our government is out of touch with the NEEDS of the citizens of this state.
Our economy is shot, our taxes cumbersome and now our voting records are subject to secrecy for those of us that pay and free for the 2 parties that have gotten us into this mess.
One more glaring example of our inability to wake up and face the realities in this state.
I don't see the problem. What's the big deal? I have voted in primaries over 40 years and this is the way it has always worked that the parties got the lists. The party does not get the name of the candidate I voted for. But if any other parties got the lists, that would be a violation of my secret ballot. Then I would not vote in a primary any more.
Voting in the primary in 1991, I recieved a lot of mail from the party I voted in and expected that. When we vote for someone, it is an invitation for that official to get in touch with us and get on their mailing list. If I'm going to vote for someone, better that they not ignore me.
While the Republicans and Democrats aren't my first pick, and one might argue that they've made a mess of things, they are not the only entities to blame.
Because we the people continue to flip flop on our voting and demand low taxes and still want the governent to pay for it all (an oxymoron in itself) we get a government that cannot agree on basic items.
This is a reflection of the voting public in my opinion. We spend millions on vanity items like plasma t.v.s and complain bitterly when we have to pay for necessary items, including, but not limited to, gas and groceries. Our priorities are messed up as a state, and the politicians shouldn't take all of the blame.
Neil and Walter are right, of course, that the problems run deeper than just this decision. But their posts miss a key point: Michigan citizens (myself included) don't necessarily object to the fact that the parties get access to the voter records; rather, we resent the suggestion that only the parties can have access to this public information. The state has no right to give a private organization a monopoly on public information. It's equivalent to their making the tax rolls available only to Quicken, or to forcing you to pay a commercial vendor for information on how the Legislature voted in its last session. The citizens of Michigan own this information: we provided it to the state, we paid for its collection, and it's truly bizarre to be told that now we can't see it. It reminds me of a colleague of mine who was hired by the federal government to do some consulting work many years ago: the agency in question paid someone to pull my friend's work out of his typewriter as he typed, because he didn't have a high enough security clearance to read his own work. This is government gone wild.
Another, tangentially-related point in regards to the primaries: thanks to the greed of our state's legislature in their race for an early primary, Michigan citizens are now effectively disenfranchised. At least at present we're being told by the national parties that Michigan's delegates won't be seated at the convention because we broke established rules on scheduling primaries. So in their hunger to increase Michigan's influence on the election and national politics (a false premise to begin with, but I won't go into the reasons here), it looks for the moment at least like our politicians have deprived us of any influence at all. If this decision holds, the Michigan primary will be little more than a data-collection opportunity for the parties to enrich their direct-mail databases.
This is not a moment when Michigan can afford to throw a tantrum and storm off to its room. We need our legislators to demonstrate some intelligence and help us craft a primary that wins us respect (and support) in Washington, not derision.
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