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 residents could vote via absentee ballots for any reason under election reforms proposed by Republicans last week, but because the reform also requires voters to pick up their ballots in person, the change might not make it much easier for some people to vote.
A new report from the Brennan Center for Justice shines the spotlight on a range of new state laws that make it more difficult to vote, particularly for poor and minority voters.
A coalition of groups, including Demos, Project Vote, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (LCCRUL), and the NAACP, sent a letter to Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson last week alleging that the state is in violation of federal law requiring voter registration at public assistance offices.
In Florida, 26.7 percent fewer new voters have registered this year than in 2006, along with 21.4 percent fewer in Maryland and 16.9 percent fewer in Tennessee.
Recently issued guidelines from the U.S. Department of Justice that give states new details on how they must offer voter registration at public assistance agencies could significantly increase political participation by the poor and minorities as soon as this fall’s election — if Michigan complies with the law, say voting rights activists.
The state of Michigan has agreed to permanently end two practices that illegally removed people form the state list of qualified voters. According to a settlement filed in the U.S. District Court in Detroit, the state of Michigan will no longer automatically cancel the voter registration of people who receive drivers licenses in other states. [...]
Michigan Democrats settled on election law expert and voting rights activist Jocelyn Benson as their candidate for Secretary of State back in April, but the Republican field of candidates remains crowded with no definite front runner, race watchers say.
In an opinion that voting rights advocates are celebrating as a victory for election transparency, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox has stated that voted ballots are public documents subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. “A person must be allowed to inspect or examine voted ballots, which are not traceable to the individual [...]
While the state of Michigan has had virtually no actual voter fraud in its entire history, the Republican candidates for Secretary of State who spoke at a recent luncheon event made voter fraud one of the primary issues on their agenda.
Thousands of people may have been wrongly removed from the state’s registered voter database due to a botched list management effort undertaken by the Michigan Bureau of Elections under pressure from the Bush administration. Between July 2006 and June 2009, state officials working under Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land conducted an unprecedented centralized and computer-assisted purge of the state’s voter database, according to the nonpartisan voting rights group the Michigan Election Reform Alliance.
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