The Michigan Board of Canvassers meets Tuesday to determine whether the supporters of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative have submitted enough valid signatures to qualify for the 2006 ballot.
According to an article in the Detroit Free Press,
MCRI submitted more than 508,000 signatures in support of its proposal. It needs 317,757 valid signatures of registered voters to get the proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot.
State elections officials reviewed a sample of 500 signatures and found 450 of them were valid. That percentage should give MCRI enough breathing room to have enough valid signatures, [MCRI Executive Director Jennifer] Gratz said.
In fact, Gratz has written, that ratio of valid to invalid signatures that MCRI has a cushion of 140,000 more signatures than needed.
The defenders of racial preferences have cried foul. Their claim is that many of the signatures were induced by fraud. And what was the fraud? Another article in the Free Press points out that in one example submitted in an affidavit by BAMN, which is leading the opposition, a canvasser told the president of the Macomb County NAACP that MCRI was “for civil rights” and would “make the playing field fair for everybody.”
Imagine that! An initiative declaring that
The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting
being described as “for civil rights” and making “the playing field fair for everybody”! How dare they say that! Don’t they know that “civil rights” now requires discriminating against some and favoring others on the basis of race?
There is indeed widespread fraud in Michigan, but it is not coming from the supporters of MCRI.
BAMN is a synonym for fraud.
Racial preferences “level” the playing field, as long as the definition of “level” is “destroy”.
I’m disappointed by the allegation that a signature-gatherer misrepresented the position of the NAACP. I hope this was anomalous, if true.
On the other hand, the complaints about accurately describing the measure as a “civil rights” initiative that would “make the playing field fair for everybody” strike me as heartwarmingly desperate.
Good luck to the MCRI.
I wish the actions like this by the ACLU surprised me but they don’t anymore.
Drop by my site and check out the new blog layout. http://www.misterpolitics.com
I would love any feedback and would gladly post emails on the site, positive or negative, if I felt them appropriate.
-Misterpolitics
Wrote ACLU, meant NAACP.
I’m Tired Of This Crap
Why is it that when the result isn’t what the left wants, people either lied or are too stupid to “really” understand?…
Steven,
As a staff member of MCRI, we did everything we could to ensure fair representation.
I’d first note that the “disappointment” you might have about the NAACP chairwoman claiming misrepresentation is part of the anecdote where “civil rights” and “make the playing field fair for everybody” were quotes of the circulators representation. That is – her story (unverifiable, since she didn’t sign, and By any means necessary can include lying) itself is consistent with a circulator that didn’t misrepresent anything. She claims that the deception was describing the petition as “for civil rights” (at worst, an opinion she didn’t agree with, but not “fraud”) and “leveling the playing field” (even more of an opinion).
The vast majority of BAMN’s claims are based on a “cookie-cutter” “affidavit” (most affidavits are “signed” by BAMN members based upon the signer’s alleged agreement with BAMN’s leading questions over the phone) that is the same exact language for more than 35 alleged signers, saying that “I was never told this was against affirmative action.” Of course, MCRI isn’t against “affirmative action,” unless you redefine that to mean race preferences. I challenge any intellectually honest person to defend each of the actual factual claims in BAMN’s 162 page first challenge, and their subsequent additions which the Board can’t consider because they were outside of the challenge deadline.
BAMN’s argument is a fraud within a fraud. It is a really, really big lie (it was Hitler that said the bigger the lie, the easier it was to persuade of the lie’s truth), built upon hundreds of smaller lies (just a couple of many examples is the claim that one of our circulators has been dead since 1999 and hence must have been fraudulent – the name of the person though is a very common last name and common first name – the evidence for the death is an entirely different address than the one we have or that was on the petition —- or the BAMN laughable claims that addresses were fraudulent because MAPQUEST searches didn’t show them).
Bottom line — there is nothing MCRI could have done to avoid BAMN’s charge of deception. They’ve been working this line since we began – they’ve already lost a court case on the language issue, and this is the same argument recycled. We would have been legitimately charged with racism if f we had done things differently — like not hire blacks — one of BAMN’s charges is that we hired too many blacks to circulate the petition, who by the sheer virtue of their skin color were able to go into inner-city Detroit and get signatures by their inherent believability to other blacks. What an insulting (as so many levels) and racist assumption. We were in the classic “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”
Chetly:
I wish you all sorts of good luck and I look forward to voting for the initiative when it gets to the ballot.
But could we dispense with the Hitler comparisons unless we’re discussing events between 1933 and 1945?
Is there a current investigation regarding the existance of apparently,a large number of invalid signatures? I would like to know the SOURCE of these invalid signatures. What did the MCRI know, and when did they know it–since many press release was listed by them trumpeting the “vast” amount of signatures they received for their ballot initiative.
–Cobra
>>>>…since many press release was listed by them…
????????
Interesting post. But…
“MCRI isn’t against “affirmative action,” unless you redefine that to mean race preferences.”
What’s the difference between AA and race (and sex) preferences?
Rich
>>What’s the difference between AA and race (and sex) preferences?
Rich
What’s the difference between “garbage” and “trash”.
“Diversity” is the same old “affirmative action” trash collected in a brand new Hefty garbage bag. It’s a distinction without a difference.
Cobra: it’s inevitable that any large petition drive will collect some invalid signatures. Petition gatherers are bound to let at least a handful of ineligible individuals sign, and there will always be jokers who sign fake names. A tested sample of the signatures shows that the proportion of invalid signatures is remarkably low and, in any event, not nearly high enough to bring the number of valid signatures below the required number. There’s no scandal here.
Xavier,
A 10% invalid rate is “remarkably low?” By whose standards?
–Cobra
Cobra,
Most petition drives hope for 75% validity and are happy if that’s what they end up with. If you don’t believe me feel free to do a little research, call a few states and ask about validity rates for recent petitions. If 90% isn’t the highest rate in MI, it’s most likely among the top few for a statewide initiative. Couple that with the most signatures ever submitted for a Constitutional amendment in MI and you’ll understand why even the media believes the board of canvassers failed to do their job.
Jennifer Gratz writes:
>>>”Most petition drives hope for 75% validity and are happy if that’s what they end up with.”
If this is the case, what is the agenda behind your January 6, 2005 Press Release, posted on your website here:
>>>”Michigan Civil Rights Initiative to End Race Preferences Submits Over a Half Million Signatures Placing Amendment on Ballot
Jennifer Gratz, Ward Connerly, and Michigan State Rep. Leon Drolet ( Macomb) announced this morning that the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative Committee
It’s common practice to send out a press release letting the media know how many signatures the proponent is submitting.
For example here’s a previous MI campaign:
Let Voters Decide