The
Supreme Court on Friday refused to revive a Michigan law that barred straight-ticket voting.
The court's brief order gave no reasons. Two justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., said they would have granted a request from state officials to allow them to enforce the law in the coming election.
Straight-ticket voting, in which voters may choose a party's entire slate with a single notation, had been available as an option in Michigan since 1891. The new law, signed in January by Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, required voters to cast votes for individual candidates — but it was blocked in July by a federal judge who ruled that the law created a burden on minority voters.
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The evidence submitted by groups and voters challenging the law, Judge Drain said, showed that "there are 'extremely high' correlations between the size of the African-American voting population within a district and the use of straight-party voting in that district."
