Primary ruling could be delayed

Friday, November 16, 2007 Primary ruling likely to be delayed Court suggests it needs extra time to decide whether Michigan can go ahead with Jan. 15 vote. Gordon Trowbridge / Detroit News Washington Bureau LANSING -- Michigan's presidential primary is likely to remain in legal limbo for several more days after an appeals court on Thursday suggested it needs more time to rule on whether plans for the Jan. 15 contest violate the state constitution. State officials had asked the three-judge panel to rule by today, but during oral arguments Thursday, the Michigan Court of Appeals judges got the state's lawyer to admit that they could delay their ruling without imperiling the election. "Do we face a drop-dead date? I think it's hard to say," Assistant Attorney General Heather Meingast told the judges. "The more we delay, the harder it is to follow the process that needs to be followed" to hold the election, she said. The appeals judges on Thursday expressed sympathy with the arguments of East Lansing political consultant Mark Grebner, the lead plaintiff of the group whose lawsuit has placed the primary in doubt. They won a ruling from an Ingham County judge last week holding the primary law unconstitutional because it would turn over voter lists generated in the state-funded primary to the Democratic and Republican parties but bar the public from accessing the lists. Because the law includes a clause invalidating the entire law if any part of it is rejected by the courts, the ruling placed the entire contest in jeopardy. "Why are they not public property?" Judge William Whitbeck, chief judge of the appeals court, asked Meingast about the lists. Whitbeck suggested the state was arguing the lists had been magically "transmuted from lead to gold," from public to private. When Meingast argued that turning over the lists to the parties served the public by discouraging masses of one party's voters from voting in the opposing party's primary, Judge Donald Owens said that amounted to "intimidation" of voters. Whitbeck also seemed to stump Grebner's attorney, Randolph Bodwin, when he asked if a law with any benefits for private parties invoked the constitution's requirement for a two-thirds vote, even if the law also has public purposes. When Bowdin said that yes, he believed that to be the case, Whitbeck said that argument would render virtually every state appropriation unconstitutional. After the hearing, Grebner said he believed the judges are looking for a way around the so-called "nonseverability" clause, which invalidates the entire law if any part of it falls. "It solves everything if they say, 'You can't steal the lists, but you can still hold the election,' " said Grebner.