The Supreme Court on Friday denied an emergency request from Michigan to reinstate a ban on “straight-ticket” voting, a mechanism that allows people to vote for every candidate in a party’s ticket by marking a single box on a ballot.
Two justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, would’ve allowed the ban to go into effect.
The court’s move is seen as a victory for voting rights advocates, who have argued that restricting straight-ticket voting would exacerbate wait times and create confusion at the polls ― with the likely result that many Michigan residents, especially black voters, would not get a chance to vote at all.
A federal judge in May had put the straight-ticket voting ban on hold ahead of the November election, reasoning that the long-standing practice was favored by black voters in prior contests and that eliminating it would burden their right to vote.
But Michigan officials, led by Attorney General Bill Schuette (R), told the Supreme Court last week that its “democratically enacted” ban did not violate the Constitution or the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but was simply aimed at “requiring voters to actually vote for each candidate they intend to support.”
