More attempts at voter supression
BRIAN DICKERSON
Cox to new voters: Not so fast
BY BRIAN DICKERSON • FREE PRESS COLUMNIST • October 29, 2008
Michigan's election clerks were in a quandary: How to enforce a state law requiring certain first-time voters to cast their ballots in person without preventing students enrolled in colleges far from home from participating in their first presidential election?
The clerks' sensible solution -- allowing students and others who registered by mail to qualify for an absentee ballot by presenting themselves in person at a county clerk's office outside their home county -- satisfied reasonable people in both parties.
Three-fourths of Michigan's 85 county clerks quickly agreed to the plan, effectively deputizing their college-town peers to confirm the identity of students enrolled in schools outside their home county.
Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, a Republican, and longtime Elections Director Chris Thomas, a straight-arrow civil servant respected by both parties, applauded the accommodation.
But state Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, apparently worried that all those newly registered collegians spelled trouble for GOP candidates across the state, asked Attorney General Mike Cox to put the kibosh on the clerks' plan.
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http://www.freep.com/article/20081029/COL04/810290342/1081/COL