I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
The Michigan Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that Practical Political Consulting, owned by Democratic Ingham County Commissioner Mark Grebner, has the right, as does anyone else, to access documents showing whether voters in the 2008 primaries voted Republican or Democrat.
In the 2008 primary elections, voters at the polls could choose which party’s primary they were going to vote in. That information was kept by the state, which had passed a law saying that this information was to be kept private — except that it would be given to the Democratic and Republican parties.
Grebner, whose company relies on selling lists that include voter preference data, filed suit based upon the Freedom of Information Act, arguing that this data — which does not include which candidate each person voted for, only which party they voted for in the primary — is not protected under any of the exemptions of that act and therefore should be available to the public. Both the trial court and now the court of appeals voted in the plaintiff’s favor.
I think the court was wrong on this and the dissent is right that this data should be covered by the privacy exemption of FOIA. This is not data about the actions of the government, which is what FOIA was intended to make more available to the public, it is data about individual voters. We go to great lengths at the polls, covering the ballot with a sheath and surrounding the polling booth with curtains, to make voting private; it should remain private.
But here’s the problem: The state was hardly in any position to argue for privacy because they had planned on giving away that data themselves, but only to the two major parties. That’s an even worse position than making it available to everyone because it’s just another way that the state protects the two major parties and keeps any third parties from ever making serious headway against them.
So the state was in the position of having to argue in favor of privacy and against it at the same time. It’s hardly a shock that the court didn’t buy that position.
You can read the full majority opinion here and the dissenting opinion here.
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