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.
Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land’s office did not respond to The New York Times, when it asked for comment and explanation for a story published today revealing that Michigan and Colorado “are removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election, which is not allowed except when voters die, notify the authorities that they have moved out of state, or have been declared unfit to vote.”
The story, penned by Ian Urbina, notes that:
In Michigan, some 33,000 voters were removed from the rolls in August, a figure that is far higher than the number of deaths in the state during the same period — about 7,100 — or the number of people who moved out of the state — about 4,400, according to data from the Postal Service.
The NYT article does not accuse Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, a Republican, of willful wrongdoing but rather suggests that the office, along with the secretaries of state in five other swing states, is struggling with proper compliance of 2002′s Help America Vote Act.
In a separate case, the ACLU is suing the Michigan Secretary of State for allegedly wrongful purging practices in violation of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act.
According to election experts the New York Times spoke with about their discoveries, “States may be improperly removing voters who have moved within the state or who are considered inactive because they have failed to vote in two consecutive federal elections.”
To illustrate the effect this has on state voter rolls and efforts by both parties to register new voters for the Nov. 4 election, the Times cited the situation in Colorado:
For example, major voter registration drives have been held this year in Colorado, which has also had a significant population increase since the last presidential election, but the state has recorded a net loss of nearly 100,000 voters from its rolls since 2004.
The swing states where the NYT found irregularities include Michigan, Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Nevada and North Carolina.
An Associated Press report based on the revelations in today’s New York Times is here.
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