A fourth lawsuit against the primary was filed and dismissed today in Ann Arbor. And an error in ballot programming, discovered today, will necessitate hand counts and delay results in about a third of the counties.
(1) Yet another lawsuit tried to halt the primary at the last minute.
This morning (Monday), Ann Arbor Libertarian Party activist and attorney David Raaflaub sued the Secretary of State, the county Election Commission, and the County Clerk, asking for the presidential primary law to be declared unconstitutional, and for an injunction against holding the primary.
Mr. Raaflaub argued that being required to disclose which party primary he is voting in violates the Michigan Constitution's guarantee of ballot secrecy.
(I know those of you in states with party registration will find this hilarious.)
This afternoon, Judge Timothy Connors of Washtenaw County Circuit Court dismissed the suit.
Background: There are numerous legal issues surrounding the primary, and three other suits have raised some of them. Political consultant Mark Grebner and several co-plaintiffs brought a lawsuit, in Ingham County, which challenged the list-handling provisions of the law; it temporarily halted the primary until the lower court ruling was reversed in the Michigan Supreme Court. A federal lawsuit in the Western District complained unsuccessfully about the disfranchisement of Michigan Democrats; another federal court action, filed recently by the ACLU and three non-major political parties in the Eastern District, will be heard after the primary.
(2) One vendor's error in programming will cause Election Night headaches in about 27 counties.
According to the state Bureau of Elections, due to an error in ballot programming, Uncommitted and Write-in votes will be counted together in many counties. In order to untangle the mess, they will have to do hand counts. In most cases, the precincts won't close and the results won't be reported until the hand counts are done.
All Michigan jurisdictions use optical scan paper ballots, so hand counts are always an option.
This will affect a significant proportion of Democratic primary ballots in those areas. That's because many Edwards and Obama and Draft-Gore people are urging votes for "uncommitted". Meanwhile, less-informed voters are likely to write-in the names of candidates not on the ballot, such as Edwards and Obama. The write-in votes are not going to be counted in the final canvass, but the ballot software normally does produce Election Night statistics on how many people voted for write-ins.
Here's a pretty good, but probably not perfect, list of the counties affected by the programming error:
Alger, Alpena, Antrim, Arenac, Baraga, Cheboygan, Chippewa, Gogebic, Grand Traverse, Houghton, Iron, Jackson, Keweenaw, Leelanau, Lenawee, Luce, Mackinac, Manistee, Marquette, Montmorency, Ontonagon, Oscoda, Otsego, Presque Isle, Roscommon, Schoolcraft, Wexford.
Most of these are smaller than average counties, including 12 of the 15 counties in the remote Upper Peninsula region. Larger counties have staff to do their own ballot programming, and so probably avoided this error.
Bottom line, if this is a close election, returns from many counties will be delayed, so it will be a very long night for the candidates and media.