Democrats file suit over ballot counting
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
By Jeff Kart
Bay Cities Times Writer

The Michigan and Bay County Democratic parties are suing Republican Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land in federal court over ballot counting.

The parties filed suit in U.S District Court in Bay City on Tuesday. The state party said in a statement the case is over Land's refusal to count "provisional ballots" of voters who inadvertently vote at the wrong polling place in the Nov. 2 general election.

Kelly Chesney, a Land spokeswoman, said her office has not been served with the suit, but Land believes she acted within the law.

The state Democratic Party said that in the 2000 election, 3 million voters nationwide were turned away from the polls without being allowed to cast a ballot because poll workers could not find their names on the official list of eligible voters for the polling place. Half of those votes could have been saved by the use of "provisional ballots," the party said.

The party said the Help America Vote Act of 2002 mandates that people whose names do not appear on the list of voters be allowed to cast provisional ballots that are separated from regular ballots and counted later. The party alleges that Land violated the act by ordering Michigan's 2,438 county and local election officials not to count provisional ballots in the upcoming election. The party is asking Land to rescind the instructions.

Chesney said, "When we drafted the statute for dealing with provisional ballots, we ran it past the U.S. Department of Justice and pre-cleared our language, so we believe we are compliant with the Help America Vote Act of 2002."

The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge David M. Lawson. A court date has not been set.