LANSING – There is no reason to grant a stay a U.S. District Court judge’s ruling striking down the state’s elimination of the option for voters to pick a party’s slate of candidates with a single mark on the ballot, the plaintiffs suing to prevent the elimination of straight ticket voting said in a Monday filing.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals requested a response from the plaintiffs by noon Monday to the state’s request last week that the court stay U.S. District Judge Gershwin Drain’s ruling holding that the repeal of straight ticket voting violated the Voting Rights Act by putting a burden on African-American voters, who tend to use the straight ticket option in greater numbers.

Additionally, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce filed an amicus brief urging the court grant the stay. The Chamber attacked the analysis the demographer for the plaintiffs conducted on the use of straight ticket voting, saying some mostly white counties in Michigan also heavily use the option, but were not included in the demographer’s analysis, which focused on mostly African-American cities.

The plaintiffs’ response to the state’s request for a stay was especially harsh on the question of injury to the state. One of the elements to obtaining a stay is the side requesting it must show how not granting a stay would cause injury.

Keeping in place Drain’s ruling would mean maintaining the straight ticket voting option that has existed for more than a century, the plaintiffs argued.

“The state cannot be injured by the enjoining of an unconstitutional law which has been found, as an uncontroverted fact, to cause disproportionately harsh burdens on African-American voters and which also deprives voters of protected First Amendment rights of association,” the plaintiffs argued. “(Secretary of State Ruth) Johnson contends that failing to stay the injunction ‘creates the possibility of voter confusion and runs contrary to the public’s interest in the smooth administration of elections.’ She has this completely backwards. Millions of voters will almost certainly be very confused if the injunction is stayed, as they would then be confronted with ballots which, for the first time in 125 years, deprive them of the option to cast a straight party vote.”

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