UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN

SOUTHERN DIVISION

UNITED STATES STUDENT

ASSOCIATION FOUNDATION, as an

organization and representative of its

members; AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES

UNION FUND OF MICHIGAN, as an

organization and representative of its

members; and AMERICAN CIVIL

LIBERTIES UNION OF MICHIGAN, as an

organization and representative of its

members,

Plaintiffs,

v.

TERRI LYNN LAND, Michigan Secretary of

State; CHRISTOPHER M. THOMAS,

Michigan Director of Elections; and

FRANCES MCMULLAN, City Clerk for the

City of Ypsilanti, Michigan, in their official

capacities,

Defendants.

 /

Case No. 2:08-cv-14019

HONORABLE STEPHEN J. MURPHY, III

ORDER GRANTING IN PART AND DENYING IN PART 

PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION FOR A PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION

This lawsuit involves a challenge to the State of Michigan's election practices.

The plaintiffs initiated the case by filing a complaint on September 17, 2008, and

simultaneously requested both the entry of a preliminary injunction and expedited hearing

of the matter. The defendants filed a brief opposing the plaintiffs' motion for preliminary

injunction on September 26, 2008, and the plaintiffs filed a reply brief on September 29,

2008. All three of these filings exceeded the page limitations for such pleadings and in all

three instances, the Court granted motions to exceed page limits. All filings have been

supported by voluminous attachments and exhibits.
2

The Court held a lengthy hearing on the motion for preliminary junction on September

30, 2008. None of the defendants have filed an answer to the complaint.

INTRODUCTION

The plaintiffs challenge two separate practices of the defendants, all of whom are

Michigan election officials. Each of the challenged practice involves the marking of voter

registrations as "rejected" or "cancelled." The plaintiffs first challenge the Michigan

Secretary of State's practice of cancelling voter registrations of Michigan voters who apply

for driver's licenses in other states. Secondly, they object to a Michigan statute requiring

the automatic "rejection" of new registrations if, after the state mails a voter ID card to the

address provided on the voter's application, the card is returned by the post office as

undeliverable to that address. The plaintiffs challenge these practices as forbidden by

certain provisions of the constitution and by various state and federal statutes. The facts

of the matter are largely undisputed.

FACTS

I. Background – Michigan’s Voter Registration Regime

Michigan's statewide voter registration database is known as its Qualified Voter File

("QVF"). Local clerks and employees in the Michigan Department of State process

completed voter registration application forms by entering the potential voter's name and

other information into the QVF. Shortly thereafter, the official prints and mails a voter

identification card to the potential voter. Subsequently, the Department of State generates

local voter lists from the QVF. These are used by local election officials on election day to

determine whether persons appearing at the polls are registered to vote. 

A voter's registration in the QVF may have one of several status marks or labels

attached to it. The default status for a registration is "active," meaning that there are no
3

further administrative obstacles to a registrant being able to vote. If, however, a potential

voter's registration materials are deemed insufficient, the voter's information will

nonetheless be entered into the QVF, but can be marked as "rejected." Similarly, when a

voter is determined to be no longer eligible, his or her registration record is retained in the

QVF, but marked as "cancelled." Because the names of voters whose registrations are

marked as "rejected" or "cancelled" will not appear on precinct lists generated from the

QVF, these voters will not be permitted to cast regular ballots if they appear at the polls on

election day in Michigan unless they can produce an original receipt of their voter

registrations.

The QVF also permits registrations to be marked as "verify" or "challenged" without

being entirely cancelled. These markings allow the registrant's name to appear on the

precinct lists generated from the QVF, but will appear on those lists as directions to local

poll workers to require various forms of confirmation of the voter's eligibility before

permitting a vote to be cast. Thus, on a precinct list, a marking of "verify" next to a voter's

registration requires the voter to provide some sort of verification of eligibility before casting

a ballot. See, e.g., M.C.L. § 168.509aa (requiring voter to affirm residence at polls if voter

fails to respond by 30 days before election to notice that local clerk received "reliable

information" that voter has moved out of jurisdiction). Similarly, a marking of "challenge"

next to a voter's name seems, under the statute, to require that a more stringent

assessment of a voter's eligibility be conducted at the polls. See M.C.L. § 168.509cc.

II. The Challenged Practices

A. "Rejection" of registrations when the

voter's ID card is returned as undeliverable.

As noted, after a potential voter's registration information is received and entered into

the QVF, the system generates a voter ID card that is mailed to the voter. If, however, an
4

original voter ID card is returned by the United States Postal Service as being undeliverable

to the address listed on the registration, M.C.L. § 168.449(3) requires the clerk to "reject

the registration and send the individual a notice of rejection." See also M.C.L. § 168.500c

(person whose original voter ID is returned as undeliverable "shall be deemed not

registered under this act.") As a result, the name of an applicant whose voter ID card is

returned as undeliverable will not appear on the local voter rolls. When a registration is

"rejected" in this manner, the city or county clerk sends out a notice of rejection to the voter.

The notice of rejection is accompanied by a reply card that offers the potential voter a

chance to complete his or her registration by correcting the address information, or by

another version of the card that simply states the necessity of re-registering should the

recipient wish to vote. In this opinion, the Court will subsequently refer to this sequence

as the "undeliverable ID practice." The Court finds that from January 1, 2008, until

September 25th, 2008, the State of Michigan "rejected" 1,438 voter registration applications

as a result of the undeliverable ID practice. Thomas aff., docket no. 15 ex. A, at ¶ 6.

This practice described above differs from the procedures required by M.C.L. §

168.449(3) when a duplicate voter ID card is returned as undeliverable. In that case, the

local clerk is directed to provide a voter with an opportunity to confirm or correct the voter's

address. Even if the voter fails to confirm or correct the address, the registration will not

be cancelled, but marked by a precinct worker as "verify" or -- if the address confirmation

form is also returned as undeliverable -- as "challenged." See M.C.L. 168.509aa(3) and

(4) (explaining procedures required by § 168.449(3)).
 1

 It is not clear to the Court whether this practice is required by state law. M.C.L. § 168.500h

requires the Secretary to conduct the cross-check process and to notify local clerks of the results.

The statute further provides that a match "shall constitute reliable information that the registered

elector has removed from the municipality." Id. But the statutory section's only directive to local

clerks is to "proceed in compliance with section 513," id., a section that has been repealed.

Regardless of whether the practice is required, there is no dispute between the parties that the

Secretary actually is directing cancellations in this manner.

 2 The language quoted here from the reply card does not appear to be accurate, since at the

time of receipt of the card the voter's registration has already been cancelled. But this apparent

inaccuracy does not underlie the plaintiffs' challenge to the practice. 

5

B. Cancellation of registrations on the voter's 

application for a driver's license in another state.

In addition to managing the state's voter rolls, the Michigan Secretary of State also

has authority over Michigan driver's license records. Since most states require an applicant

for a driver's license to surrender any license the applicant holds from another state, at the

time of application the Secretary regularly receives records of surrendered Michigan

driver's licenses from her counterparts in other states. At issue in this case is the

Secretary's specific practice of cross-referencing the numbers on surrendered licenses

against the driver's license numbers listed in the state's QVF, and then marking any

matching voter registrations as "cancelled."1

 See Thomas aff., docket no. 15 ex. A, at p.

30. The sequence described in this paragraph will subsequently be referenced in this

opinion as the "driver's license practice."

When a match of the sort described above occurs, a local clerk must send to the

affected voter a reply card that permits the affected voter to state that his or her absence

from Michigan is only temporary and that he or she remains register to vote. If the voter

makes an affirmation of this sort, the voter's registration is returned to "active" status by the

Secretary. The reply card also states that "[i]f the reply card is not returned, you will be

asked to confirm your address at the polls on Election Day. If the reply card is not returned

and you do not vote within 30 days, your voter registration will be canceled."2
6

ANALYSIS

I. Plaintiffs' Legal Challenges

The plaintiffs assert a wide variety of legal theories in support of the unlawfulness of

the two practices governing voter registrations in which Michigan engages. The heart of the

plaintiffs' legal attack, however, is grounded in Section 8 of the National Voting Rights Act

(the "NVRA," or "Act"), codified at 42 U.S.C. §§ 1973 et seq. More specifically, subsection

1973-gg(6)(d) of the Act states the exclusive procedures by which a state may “remove the

name of a registrant from the official list of eligible voters in elections for Federal office on

the ground that the registrant has changed residence.” Removals are permitted only in two

situations: The first situation in which a registered voter can be removed from the rolls is

when a registrant confirms the disqualifying address change in writing. 42 U.S.C. §

1973gg-6(d)(1)(A). The second situation occurs when (a) the state sends the registrant,

by forwardable mail, a postage-prepaid return form by which the registrant can update his

address information, and (b) the registrant neither returns the form nor votes or appears

to vote in the next two general elections for Federal office. Id. at § 1973gg-6(d)(1)(B). 

The plaintiffs claim that both the undeliverable ID practice and the driver's license

practice are deregistrations of registered voters on the basis of a change in residence,

within the meaning of the NVRA. If their characterizations are accurate, it follows that the

practices violate the NVRA, since the defendants -- throughout the short history of this

litigation -- have conceded that the procedures provide neither the notice nor the waiting

period mandated by 42 U.S.C. § 1973gg-6(d). The plaintiffs therefore seek a declaration

that the practices are unlawful, and request that the Court enjoin the defendants to cease

the practices, to restore to the rolls all registrants marked "rejected" or "cancelled" pursuant
7

to the practices since January 1, 2006, and to preserve all records related to such

cancellations until the end of 2009.

II. Standing to Sue

One overriding and threshold issue is whether the plaintiffs have standing to sue.

Although the defendants have not moved for dismissal based on lack of standing, both

sides raise the issue in their briefs on the instant motion and the Court provided counsel

ample opportunity to address the matter during oral argument. All parties surely recognize

that “[b]ecause the standing issue goes to this Court's subject matter jurisdiction, it can be

raised sua sponte.” Loren v. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mich., 505 F. 3d 598, 607 (6th Cir.

2007). The Court therefore addresses standing here.

A. The Legal Standard.

To demonstrate the existence of a case or controversy of the kind that a federal court

is constitutionally authorized to hear, a plaintiff must show that “‘(1) it has suffered an ‘injury

in fact’ that is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or

hypothetical; (2) the injury is fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant; and

(3) it is likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a

favorable decision.’” Cleveland Branch, NAACP v. City of Parma, 263 F. 3d 513, 523-24

(2001) (quoting Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Envtl. Servs., 528 U.S. 167, 180-81

(2000)). 

Here, the plaintiffs are not natural persons, but instead associations of persons.

“There is no question that an association may have standing in its own right to seek judicial

relief from injury to itself and to vindicate whatever rights and immunities the association

itself may enjoy.” Am. Canoe Ass’n, Inc. v. City of Louisa Water & Sewer Comm’n, 389 F.

3d 536, 544 (6th Cir. 2004) (quoting Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 511 (1975)). Further,
8

regardless of whether an association of persons would not have standing based on its

organizational interests, it will be able to sue as a representative of its membership “when

its members would otherwise have standing to sue in their own right, the interests at stake

are germane to the organization's purpose, and neither the claim asserted nor the relief

requested requires the participation of individual members in the lawsuit.” Cleveland

Branch, 263 F. 3d at 524 (quoting Friends of the Earth, 528 U.S. at 181 (2000)). 

B. Level of Showing Required.

"Since they are not mere pleading requirements but rather an indispensable part of

the plaintiff's case, each element [of standing] must be supported in the same way as any

other matter on which the plaintiff bears the burden of proof, i.e., with the manner and

degree of evidence required at the successive stages of the litigation." Lujan v. Defenders

of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 561 (1992) (quoted in Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians

v. U.S., 288 F. 3d 910, 915 (6th Cir. 2007)). Thus, in those cases when a defendant moves

for dismissal based on a plaintiff’s lack of standing, a court “must accept as true all material

allegations of the complaint, and must construe the complaint in favor of the complaining

party.” Kardules v. City of Columbus, 95 F. 3d 1335, 1346 (6th Cir. 1996) (quoting Warth

v. Seldin, 422 U.S. at 501). In this sua sponte inquiry, the Court will apply the standard

stated above and further notes that under the standard, if the allegations in the complaint

do not establish standing, “it is within the trial court's power to allow or to require the plaintiff

to supply, by amendment to the complaint or by affidavits, further particularized allegations

of fact deemed supportive of the plaintiff's standing.” Warth, 422 U.S. at 501. It is only at

trial that a plaintiff bears the burden of proving facts supporting standing, along with the

elements of its case. Lujan, 594 U.S. at 56.
9

The plaintiffs in the present suit claim that they have adequately alleged facts

supporting their standing, both in their own rights and as representatives of their members.

The Court will first explain why the plaintiffs have not alleged a sufficient injury to their

organizational interests to have standing in their own rights, and then set forth the reasons

for the Court's conclusion that the plaintiffs have standing to sue as representatives of their

members. 

C. Injury In Fact.

1. The Legal Standard.

A person who has actually been harmed or faces certain future harm obviously

presents the kind of injury in fact required for standing to sue the party by whom he or she

was or will be injured. But, as plaintiffs note, even a likelihood of future harm, which may

or may not materialize into actual injury for the plaintiff, qualifies as an injury in fact for

purposes of standing analysis. This principle has been repeatedly applied in election-law

cases decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and various lower

courts within it.

Sandusky County Democratic Party v. Blackwell, 387 F. 3d 565 (6th Cir. 2004)

involved, among other things, a challenge to Ohio’s requirement that a poll worker

determine that a voter of questionable eligibility was at the correct precinct polling place

before being permitting the voter to cast a provisional ballot. Id. at 571. The plaintiff

organizations argued that human errors in compiling the rolls, or in determining whether a

given voter's name was on them, could result in some of their members mistakenly being

wrongfully denied the right to vote on this basis. Since these mistakes could occur up to

the moment a voter was turned away from the polls, however, they plaintiffs could not

beforehand which if any of their members would actually be disenfranchised in this fashion.
10

Nevertheless, the Sixth Circuit held that they had standing based on the increased risk of

disenfranchisement faced by all their members as a result of the “inevitable . . . mistakes”

of poll workers. Id. at 574.

Other cases have adopted similar reasoning. In Stewart v. Blackwell, 444 F. 3d 843

(6th Cir. 2006), vacated as moot, 473 F. 3d 696 (6th Cir. 2007), the Sixth Circuit found

several individual plaintiffs to have standing to claim that the punch-card voting machines

used at their polling places were unlawfully unreliable, again on a theory that each plaintiff

faced an increased risk of having her vote counted improperly as a result of the alleged

unreliability. Although the judgment in that case was vacated as moot when Ohio

abandoned the use of the machines in question, its reasoning on the standing issue is fully

consistent with that of Sandusky County. 

Two cases decided by the district courts have also applied this standard as well. In

both Summit County Democratic Central and Executive Committee v. Blackwell, No.

5:04CV2165, 2004 WL 5550698 (N.D. Ohio Oct. 31, 2004), and Spencer v. Blackwell, 347

F. Supp. 2d 528 (S.D. Ohio 2004) district judges found the plaintiffs to have standing to sue

based on the risk that they would be wrongfully disenfranchised by Ohio’s laws permitting

at-the-polls challenges to voters’ qualifications.

To establish representative standing in this case, then, the plaintiffs must plead that

at least one of their members either actually has been or will be wrongfully disenfranchised

by each of the complained-of practices, or that they face some risk of disenfranchisement.

By contrast, to establish standing in their own right, the plaintiffs must plead that such

wrongful disenfranchisements, or the risks thereof, have harmed them as organizations in

some concrete and meaningful way. Under either theory, plaintiffs' standing will ultimately
 3

 Of course even a single disenfranchisement would support standing for the disenfranchised

person to sue as an individual, or for an organization to which he or she belonged to sue in a

representative capacity. That is why, as the Court will explain below, the plaintiffs have pleaded

11

have to be grounded in the deprivations of voting rights caused by the Secretary's allegedly

unlawful practices. 

2. Standing as organizations.

The plaintiffs claim that they have alleged sufficient harm to their organizations as a

whole to have standing in their own rights. Each of the plaintiffs claims an interest in

politically empowering the communities they serve, which interest they further by, among

other things, conducting voter registration drives. Compl. at ¶¶ 2-3. Nevertheless, "a mere

interest in a problem is not . . . sufficient to confer standing on an organization." Greater

Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless v. Cincinnati, 56 F. 3d 710, 716 (6th Cir. 1995) (citing

Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 739 (1972)). Instead, the plaintiffs must show that

their organizations themselves, as opposed to the ideals they pursue, have suffered some

kind of concrete harm as a result of the alleged disenfranchisement. To take the most

obvious example, if the plaintiffs' expenditures of time and money on voter registration

drives have been rendered a waste in any significant measure because the voters they

registered at those drives were unlawfully taken off the rolls, that would be sufficient injury

to confer standing. 

Here, though, the plaintiffs have alleged that some of their members are among the

voters who face disenfranchisement, but do not allege, either expressly or by implication,

that they as organizations had any concrete involvement in the registration of those voters.

Even if the organizations had actually registered such voters, the complaint cannot fairly

be read to allege that the number of such disenfranchisements was great enough to have

had the required impact upon the organization's interests as a whole.3

 Nor have the
facts establishing representative standing in this case.

12

plaintiffs alleged in any other way that the disenfranchisements harm their concrete

organizational interests, as opposed to the organizations' more abstract social goals.

Therefore, in the view of the Court, in order to proceed on a theory of organizational

standing the plaintiffs would be required to amend their complaint to include more specific

allegations as to the nature and manner of the harm or potential harm to their

organizations.

3. Standing as representatives of the plaintiffs' members

The plaintiffs additionally claim standing not just as organizations, but as

representatives of their members who individually face disenfranchisement. Attacking this

claim, the defendants argue that the plaintiffs have not identified any individual, much less

one of their members, who they claim to have been harmed by the practices of which they

complain. The plaintiffs have, however, pleaded the existence of such persons among their

membership. Specifically, paragraphs 73 and 88 of the complaint allege that the out of

state driver's license application and undeliverable ID practices, respectively, "present[] the

real and immediate threat that such members will be disfranchised." Compl. ¶¶ 73, 88. 

While these allegations are conclusory, in light of the plaintiffs' other allegations, and

"constru[ing] the complaint in favor of the complaining party,” Kardules v. City of Columbus,

95 F. 3d 1335, 1346 (6th Cir. 1996), the facts required for standing follow from these claims

by necessary implication. 

With respect to the undeliverable ID card practice, paragraph 73 can fairly be read as

a claim that some of plaintiffs' members have recently registered to vote, but have not yet

received their voter ID cards -- so as to be at risk of wrongful disenfranchisement if human

error causes them to be returned as undeliverable. The paragraph can also be read to
13

claim that other of plaintiffs' members have actually been wrongfully removed from the rolls

pursuant to this practice, and will almost certainly be denied the right to vote in the

upcoming election. 

With respect to the out of state driver's license application practice, paragraph 88

necessarily implies that some of plaintiffs' members have applied or are currently planning

on applying for out-of-state driver's licenses without actually surrendering their Michigan

residence. The paragraph also implies that some of plaintiffs' members have indicated or

plan to indicate on their applications that their listed address is not for voter-registration

purposes, and that they were or will be unable or unwilling to return the reply card from the

state in time to be restored to the active status. 

Thus, once the logical implications of the sparse language of the complaint are

considered, the Court concludes that it satisfies -- just barely -- the requirement of alleging

injury in fact to the plaintiffs' membership, so as to support representative standing to

challenge both practices at issue here.

D. Causal Connection Between the Injury and the Challenged Practices.

Michigan claims that any injury suffered by the plaintiff results not from the Secretary’s

adverse voter-registration actions, but rather from the actions of the voters which

precipitate the Secretary’s decisions. This argument is plausible, but without merit. With

regard to the undeliverable ID practice, it does not appear that an eligible voter who gives

his correct address could do anything differently to avoid the risk that his or her card would

be misaddressed or misdelivered, and as a result returned as undeliverable. With respect

to the out of state driver's license application practice, it is true that a voter's registration will

not be cancelled if he or she does not apply for a license from another state, and thus that

any disenfranchisement is, in a superficial sense, "caused" by that action. But it is equally
14

plausible to conclude that disenfranchisement may caused by the defendants' allegedly

unlawful actions in cancelling the voter's registration. The Court divines no reason, and

defendants offer none, why the first of these "causes" is the only one that should count in

its analysis of the plaintiffs' standing to sue.

E. Redressability

Michigan argues against the redressability requirement on the sole ground that

because its cancellation-notification and provisional-ballot procedures prevent any voters

from actually being disenfranchised, there is no injury to redress. This argument is

redundant of the argument the State makes in opposing a finding of injury in fact, and is

addressed above in the Court’s consideration of that element of the standing test. In other

respects, it is clear that the disenfranchisement alleged by the plaintiffs will cease if, as

plaintiffs request in this action, the defendants are ordered to stop rejecting and cancelling

the relevant voter registrations, and restore registrations already rejected or cancelled.

Therefore, the redressability requirement has been met in this case. 

F. Additional Representative Standing Requirements.

The complaint states that the plaintiff United States Student Foundation has as "a

cornerstone" of its activities "helping students make their voice heard at the ballot box,

including through non-partisan voter registration drives," and that its "national electoral

project focuses on building strong peer-to-peer student electoral coalitions and maximizing

voter turnout among college populations." Compl. at ¶ 2. Likewise, the plaintiff ACLU Fund

"is extensively involved in a variety of voter empowerment initiatives throughout Michigan,

including voter education, collection and analysis of voting irregularities, advocacy for

positive election reform, and -- when necessary -- litigation to ensure the protection of

voters' rights under the law." Id. at ¶ 3. Disenfranchisement, the injury alleged here,
15

seems obviously germane to these organizational purposes, and the defendants do not

contest this point.

Finally, participation by individuals “is ‘not normally necessary when an association

seeks prospective or injunctive relief for its members.’” Sandusky Co. Democratic Party v.

Blackwell, 387 F. 3d 565, 574 (6th Cir. 2004) (quoting United Food & Commercial Workers

Union Local 751 v. Brown Group, Inc., 517 U.S. 544, 546 (1996)). In this matter, the

defendants have not identified any need for individual participation, and the Court does not

see the necessity for it in seeking the relief requested. 

G. Conclusion -- Standing to Sue.

The plaintiffs have pleaded standing, as representatives of their members, to seek the

relief they request. Should this case progress to trial, they will bear the additional burden

of proving what they have pleaded in order to conclusively establish their standing to sue.

III. Preliminary Injunction Motions.

The decision of whether or not to issue a preliminary injunction lies within the sound

discretion of the district court. Golden v. Kelsey-Hayes, 73 F.3d 648, 653 (6th Cir. 1996).

The Supreme Court and the Sixth Circuit have noted that "the purpose of a preliminary

injunction is merely to preserve the relative positions of the parties until a trial on the merits

can be held." Univ. of Tex. v. Camenisch, 451 U.S. 390, 395 (1981); Six Clinics Holding

Corp., II v. Cafcomp Sys., Inc., 119 F.3d 393, 400 (6th Cir. 1997). The Sixth Circuit,

however, has advised that "a preliminary injunction is an extraordinary remedy which

should be granted only if the movant carries his or her burden of proving that the

circumstances clearly demand it." Overstreet v. Lexington-Fayette Urban Co. Gov't, 305

F.3d 566, 573 (6th Cir. 2002) (citation omitted).
 4

 There apparently is no dispute that such a person has been "removed . . . from the official list

of eligible voters" within the meaning of 42 U.S.C. § 1973gg-6(d)(1), despite the fact that his or her

name remains listed in the QVF. The Court concludes that persons designated as ineligible to vote

16

When considering whether to grant the "extraordinary" remedy of a preliminary

injunction, a district court must consider and balance four factors: (1) whether the moving

party has a strong likelihood of success on the merits; (2) whether the moving party would

suffer irreparable injury without the preliminary injunction; (3) whether issuance of the

preliminary injunction would cause substantial harm to others; and (4) whether the public

interest would be served by issuance of the preliminary injunction. Jones v. City of Monroe,

341 F.3d 474, 476 (6th Cir. 2003) (citations omitted). These "are factors to be balanced,

not prerequisites that must be met." Hamad v. Woodcrest Condo. Ass'n, 328 F.3d 224, 230

(6th Cir. 2003) (citation omitted). A district court must make specific findings concerning

each of the four factors unless fewer are dispositive of the issue. Performance Unlimited

v. Questar Publishers, Inc., 52 F.3d 1373, 1381 (6th Cir. 1995); Jones, 341 F.3d at 476

(citations omitted) (a court "is not required to make specific findings concerning each of the

four factors used in determining a motion for a preliminary injunction if fewer factors are

dispositive of the issue.").

A. Likelihood of Success on the Merits.

1. Lawfulness of the Practices.

a. The undeliverable ID practice.

The parties' dispute over the legality of the undeliverable ID practice essentially boils

down to a disagreement over the meaning of the word "registrant," as it appears in the

NVRA. As the Court noted earlier, when a voter's original voter ID card is returned to a

local clerk as undeliverable, the clerk marks the voter's registration in the QVF as

"rejected,"4

 without following the procedures mandated by the NVRA for removing voters
have in fact been so removed, even if their registrations appear in the same document with voters

who remain listed as eligible. In any event, the precinct lists are also indisputably "official list[s] of

eligible voters," and if a voter's registration has been rejected or cancelled, it is clearly removed

when those lists are compiled from the QVF.

 5 It could be argued that any removals of voters produced by the undeliverable ID practice are

made on the grounds that the removed voters have never shown that they have a Michigan

residence in the first place, rather than that they have moved away from the undeliverable

addresses, and that § 1973gg-(d) therefore does not apply in this circumstance at all. The

defendants, however, do not make this argument, apparently because failure to prove residence

is not a permissible ground for removal under the NVRA. The Act provides that a registrant may be

removed from the rolls based only on his own request, criminal conviction, mental incapacity, the

voter's death, or the voter's change of residence. 42 U.S.C. § 1973gg-6(a)(3) and (4). Thus, if the

plaintiffs are correct that the undeliverable ID practice actually does remove already-registered

voters, change of residence is the only possible ground for such removals under the NVRA, and

the § 1973gg-6(d) provisions will govern the removals.

17

from the rolls based on a change of address.5 The NVRA, however, provides that only

"registrants" enjoy the protection of these procedures. Plaintiffs therefore claim that a

potential voter who sends in registration materials becomes a "registrant" under the NVRA

as soon as a Department of State employee or a local clerk processes the materials and

enters the voter's name into the QVF. By contrast, the defendants argue that a potential

voter's registration is actually not effective until the voter receives his or her voter ID card.

If the defendants prevailed on this point, the Court would have little option but to conclude

that the undeliverable ID practice does not remove "registrants" from the rolls, because the

potential voters whose registrations are marked "rejected" after their cards are returned as

undeliverable would never have been registered in the first place.

The parties cite what appear to be dueling statutes to establish their respective

positions on the issue of when a potential voter becomes registered to vote as a matter of

Michigan law. Defendants point out that M.C.L. § 168.500c states that a person whose

original voter ID is returned as undeliverable "shall be deemed not registered." In

response, the plaintiffs rely upon M.C.L. § 168.509o(2), which provides that

"[n]otwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary . . . a person who appears to
 6

 Since the statute only governs when a registrant can be removed from the list of eligible

voters, it could be construed in the strictest sense to permit a state never to place some or all of its

"registrants" on that list in the first place. But this interpretation would have a similar effect of

permitting states to follow NVRA removal procedures only when they saw fit, and thus of completely

neutering those procedures. It is also theoretically possible that some persons whose names

appear on the list of eligible voters are nevertheless not "registrants." The defendants here,

however, make no such contention with respect to potential voters whose registrations were

affected by the undeliverable ID practice.

18

vote in an election and whose name appears in the qualified voter file for that city,

township, village, or school district is considered a registered voter."

The Court regards this dispute as largely irrelevant, however, because making the

question of who is a "registrant" a matter of state law would frustrate the NVRA's purpose

of regulating state conduct of elections, by essentially permitting states to decide when they

will be bound by the Act's requirements. If Michigan can label potential voters who have

not received their IDs as not "registered" under the NVRA, nothing is to stop it from

attaching that same label to any other group of people, and thus from circumventing the

procedures mandated by the NVRA whenever it sees fit. Instead, the Court concludes that

whether a potential voter is a "registrant" entitled to the NVRA's protections is clearly a

question of federal law, to be answered by a careful consideration of the substance of the

potential voter's status in the state registration program in question.

Indeed, the plain language of the NVRA virtually dictates that a person be regarded

a "registrant" within the meaning of that statute at the moment his or her name appears on

"the official list of eligible voters." See 42 U.S.C. § 1973gg-6(d)(1).6 In Michigan, as noted

above, this list is the QVF (exclusive of registrations designated "rejected" or "cancelled")

and the individual precinct rolls generated from it. Thus, the lawfulness of the undeliverable

ID practice ultimately hinges on whether Michigan lists a potential voter as permitted to vote

on the QVF as soon as it processes his or her registration application, without waiting to

determine whether it will be returned as undeliverable. In other words, the central question
19

is: if a potential voter's ID card were to be returned as undeliverable only after an election

has intervened, would the voter's QVF status have permitted him or her to vote in that

election in the meantime? At the hearing on this motion, counsel for the defendants

represented that the answer to these questions is "yes." In fact, counsel stressed at the

hearing that a potential voter whose ID is returned as undeliverable may nonetheless cast

a regular ballot on election day if he or she presents a receipt of registration at the polls.

Since the Court accepts these facts as true, the Court also concludes that a potential voter

in Michigan is a "registrant" under the NVRA the moment the state processes his or her

registration, and that the voter may only have his or her status changed to one that would

not permit a valid vote (regardless of whether Michigan calls the change "rejection,"

"cancellation," or anything else) pursuant to the provisions of the statute.

In Ass'n of Cmty. Orgs. for Reform Now v. Miller, 912 F. Supp. 976 (W.D. Mich. 1995)

(hereinafter "ACORN"), the court took a contrary view, and found Michigan's categorization

of voters as registered or unregistered to be conclusive of the questions involved. In

support of its position, the Western District of Michigan cited portions of the NVRA's

legislative history reflecting a congressional desire to leave the states "discretion" to tailor

their notification procedures to prevent fraud. Id. at 987 (quoting Sen. Rep. No. 6, 103d

Cong., 1st Sess., at 30 (1993); H.R. Rep. No. 9, 103d Cong., 1st Sess., at 14 (1993), U.S.

Code Cong. & Admin. News 1993 at 105, 118, 134). While such discretion is undoubtedly

important, the terms of the NVRA, which the Court reads to be clear and unambiguous on

the issue, say absolutely nothing about it. Moreover, the state's discretion can be

appropriately preserved within the provisions of § 1973gg-6(d), without making its

procedures entirely optional for any state in the union. Nothing prevents Michigan, for

example, from creating a new "pending" voter registration status that will bar potential
 7

 For this reason, it is for the most part unnecessary to reach the other asserted grounds for

the unlawfulness of the undeliverable ID practice. Specifically, although M.C.L. § 168.509aa

provides procedural protections similar to those of 42 U.S.C. § 1973gg-6(d), the Court expresses

no view on the state-law question of who qualifies as a "voter" within the meaning of this statute,

so as to be entitled to those protections. Since these procedures are redundant to those of the

NVRA, it is irrelevant whether Michigan offers them to a narrower class of persons than those

deemed "registrants" under federal law. In considering what relief is appropriate, therefore, the

Court will briefly consider below the plaintiffs' claim that the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil

Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1971(a)(2)(A), require that the registrants whose original voter IDs are

returned as undeliverable be treated the same as those who have their duplicate IDs returned to

the sender.

20

voters from voting, and thus render them not NVRA "registrants," for a limited time after

their information is added to the QVF, and providing that any registrations returned as

undeliverable during that time will be rejected. What the state may not do and still act

consistently with the NVRA is to place a potential voter's name on the QVF in a status that

permits the registrant to vote, only to later mark the registration as "rejected" at a later date

-- possibly even after the registrant has cast a vote. Because the defendants in this case

appear to be doing precisely that, the Court concludes that the plaintiffs have shown a

strong likelihood that the undeliverable ID practice violates federal law.7

b. The driver’s license practice.

The defendants concede that the driver's license practice involves cancelling voter

registrations based on the voter's change on residence, such that 42 U.S.C. § 1973gg6(d)(1) requires either written confirmation of the address change from the voter, or written

notice to the voter followed by a waiting period of two federal elections. Defendants claim,

however, that by applying for a driver's license in another state, a voter is confirming his or

her change of residence in writing, in satisfaction of subparagraph (A) of that provision. In

support of this contention, they cite another portion of the NVRA, codified at 42 U.S.C. §

1973gg-3(a). This subsection provides that:

(1) Each State motor vehicle driver's license application (including any renewal

application) submitted to the appropriate State motor vehicle authority under State
21

law shall serve as an application for voter registration with respect to elections for

Federal office unless the applicant fails to sign the voter registration application.

(2) An application for voter registration submitted under paragraph (1) shall be

considered as updating any previous voter registration by the applicant. 

Further, subsection (d) of the same section provides that

[a]ny change of address form submitted in accordance with State law for purposes

of a State motor vehicle driver's license shall serve as notification of change of

address for voter registration with respect to elections for Federal office for the

registrant involved unless the registrant states on the form that the change of

address is not for voter registration purposes.

The plaintiffs urge that subsection (d) applies only to changes of address within a

single state, and not to an original application for a driver's license in another state. This

specific question has not been exhaustively briefed, and the Court will not decide it now.

It does seem to the Court, however, that interpreting subsections (a) and (d) to both apply

to an original driver's license application would create the potential that the two sections

might mandate contradictory outcomes in some cases. Specifically, if an applicant for a

driver's license signed a voter-registration application in conjunction with the driver's license

paperwork, subsection (a)(2) would require this action to be considered an update to the

previous voter registration. This would permit the address on the old registration to be

replaced with the address on the new application -- indeed, such address updates would

seem to be the main purpose of paragraph (2). But if subsection (d) were also to apply to

the case, the applicant would additionally be able to indicate on the driver's license

application that the change of address was not for voting purposes. Obviously, both of

these mandates could not be simultaneously fulfilled. The easiest way to avoid potentially

inconsistent outcomes such as these would be to accept the plaintiffs' invitation to interpret

the phrase "change of address form" in subsection (d) as not including applications for an

entirely new driver's license in a state where the applicant has not previously held a license.
22

Should the defendants prefer a different construction, they should propose some alternative

solution to this problem -- and authority for their proposal -- as soon as possible.

Whatever the correct construction of subsection (d) may be, however, there can be

little doubt that the out of state driver's license practice is violative of the NVRA. Even if out

of state driver's license applications qualify as "change of address forms" under subsection

(d), that very subsection still clearly requires states to ascertain whether the applicant has

designated the application as not a change of address for voter registration purposes. The

plaintiffs claim, and the defendants have not contradicted, that Michigan currently has no

procedure for doing so. If, on the other hand, subsection (d) does not apply to driver's

license applications, then subsection (a) would only permit the Secretary to cancel an

applicant's Michigan voter registration if the applicant actually registered to vote in

conjunction with the application. But again, there is no evidence that the current practices

in place in the state of Michigan include any efforts, by the defendants or anyone else, to

determine whether a voter actually does so.

The defendants claim that applying for a driver's license in another state is in fact

confirmation of a change of address for voting purposes even if, as is permitted by the

NVRA, the voter designates it otherwise. This is true, the defendants assert, because under

the law of every state except Hawaii, only residents are permitted to apply for driver's

licenses. As a result, they argue, no Michigan voter will be permitted to apply for a driver's

license in another state without also confirming his or her residence in that state. 

Even if the defendants' survey of state laws is correct, their conclusion is invalid for

two different reasons. First, even if it is unlawful in almost every state to apply for a driver's

license without being a resident there, it is dubious whether every person applying for a

driver's license actually does confirm his or her residency in the state of application.
23

Defendants concede that fully eighteen states -- including Michigan's largest contiguous

neighbor, Ohio -- have no requirement that a driver's license applicant actually prove

residency. Response brief, docket no. 15, ex. A. Thus, the reality is that state driver's

license application procedures permit some applicants, through ignorance of or even

outright disregard for the law, to apply for driver's licenses in different states even while

representing that their home address or domicile is still in Michigan. Although defendants'

evidence indicates that this action is unlawful in most states, it still does not constitute

written confirmation of an address change, and thus cannot justify the cancellation of an

applicant's Michigan voter registration -- which in any event would be an illogical

consequence for this particular form of lawlessness. 

Second, and more importantly in the view of the Court, there is no reason to believe

that the kind of "residence" that any given state requires in order to issue a driver's license

is identical to "residence" for voting purposes. Unless it is at least possible for a person to

have different addresses for his or her driver's license and voting residences, it would be

nonsensical for the NVRA to permit a voter to change the former without also changing the

latter. In fact, Michigan itself permits out-of-state driver's license applicants to retain their

active status in the QVF by affirming that their out of state addresses are only temporary,

and that they remains eligible to vote in Michigan. Thomas aff., docket 15 ex. A, at ¶ 11.

Thus, even the state recognizes that voters can be eligible both to vote in Michigan and to

apply for a driver's license in another state, and that the residence requirements for the two

are not always identical. For all these reasons, then, and contrary to the defendants'
 8

 Even if every out of state driver's license applicant were to have moved out of Michigan for

voting purposes, the NVRA would still clearly forbid the Secretary from regarding their applications

as evidence of that fact if the applicants had designated otherwise. In this case, though, regardless

of any NVRA violation, the plaintiffs would have no standing to sue because there could be no

supportable allegation of harm since no voter would have been wrongfully disenfranchised. 

 9 There is, accordingly, no need to consider the plaintiffs' other challenges to the driver's license

practice.

24

contention, the appearance of an out-of-state address on a driver's license application

simply does not establish that the applicant is no longer an eligible Michigan voter.8

In their complaint and briefing on the instant motion, the plaintiffs essentially argued

that every cancellation pursuant to the out of state driver's license practice was unlawful.

As the foregoing makes clear, this argument is incorrect. 42 U.S.C. § 1973gg-3(a) permits

such cancellations if a driver's license applicant also registers to vote in his or her new state,

and, if it applies, subsection (d) of the same section permits such cancellations unless the

applicant affirmatively opts out of them. At the hearing on the preliminary injunction motion,

the plaintiffs narrowed their contentions to cover only cancellations precluded by one or both

of these provisions The Court concludes, therefore, based upon all of the foregoing

analysis, that the plaintiffs' legal claim is likely to succeed on the merits.9

2. Likelihood of Success on the Standing Issues.

The Court is mindful that to succeed on the merits at trial, the plaintiffs will bear the

burden of proving their standing to sue in addition to the unlawfulness of the defendants’

practices, see Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 561 (1992), and that a plaintiff's

likelihood of successfully showing standing is properly considered as part of the overall

analysis of the likelihood of success on the merits, see N.E. Ohio Coalition for Homeless &

Serv. Employees Int'l Union v. Blackwell, 467 F. 3d 999, 1010 (6th Cir. 2006) ("The

weakness of plaintiffs' showing of standing leads us to conclude that their likelihood of
25

success on the merits is not strong.") The Court will now analyze whether the plaintiffs are

likely to succeed on the merits of the standing issues in this case.

a. Undeliverable ID practice.

As the Court noted previously, to establish representational standing in this case, the

plaintiffs will eventually have to prove that at least one of their members actually has

suffered or is at risk of suffering wrongful disenfranchisement as a result of the complained

of practices. Since plaintiffs plead that they have a total Michigan membership of over

20,000, it appears likely that they will be able to produce one or more members who have

registered recently enough that they are still in doubt as to whether their registration will be

wrongfully cancelled as a result of their ID being mistakenly returned as undeliverable. The

Court has already determined that exposure to such a risk from the actions in question here

is sufficient to confer standing. Thus, considering the lawfulness and standing prongs

together, the Court finds that plaintiffs have a very strong likelihood of succeeding on the

merits of their challenge to the undeliverable voter ID practice.

b. Out of state driver's license application practice.

The plaintiffs' standing to challenge the out of state driver's license application practice

is in more serious doubt. As the Court noted above, the voters placed at risk of

disenfranchisement by this practice appears quite narrow. 

The Court believes there to be three characteristics common to all the members of this

group: (1) they have applied or plan to apply for a driver's license in a state other than

Michigan; (2) they have designated or plan on designating that their address on their

application is not for voter-registration purposes; and (3) they have been or will actually be

eligible to vote in Michigan in at least one election after their registrations were or will be
 10 If a driver's license applicant has indicated that his or her change of address is not for voter

registration purposes, then the Secretary's cancellation of his or her registration is a violation of the

NVRA regardless of whether the voter actually remains eligible in Michigan. Nevertheless, if the

voter is not eligible in Michigan, then the voter has not suffered the harm of disenfranchisement and

thus will lack standing to sue.

 11 In their brief, the plaintiffs claimed that the number was approximately 280,000 per year, but

at the hearing they conceded the correctness of the Secretary's figure.

26

cancelled.10 Since the Court regards it to be nearly impossible for a Michigan resident to

inadvertently apply for a driver's license in another state, persons not in this group face no

risk of wrongful disenfranchisement from the driver's license practice, and thus they have

no standing to challenge it.

The Court is considerably less confident that one of the plaintiffs' members will prove

to have these characteristics than that one of their members has recently registered to vote,

as is required for standing to challenge the undeliverable ID practice. The Secretary

informed the Court both in her brief and at the hearing in this matter that she receives notice

of about 72,000 out of state driver's license applications every year.11 At the hearing, the

Court directly questioned counsel for both sides as to how many out of state drivers license

applicants indicate that the address on their applications are not for voting purposes, and

whether they are legally correct in so indicating. Their responses made it apparent to the

Court that neither side can present, because no data whatever exists, any evidence or other

information that would allow the Court or any other finder of fact to answer these questions.

Furthermore, while -- for the reasons discussed previously -- the defendants' argument

that most states permit only residents to apply to them for driver's licenses does not

establish that the driver's license practice harms no one at all, it certainly does suggest

strongly that the number of persons harmed by the practice may be small. Although the

residence requirement for driver's license purposes may be less stringent than that for

voting purposes, it nevertheless undoubtedly deters many people who satisfy neither of
27

them from applying for out of state driver's licenses-- and thus prevents them from having

their Michigan voter registrations cancelled.

Thus, the Court finds that the only persons who are even potentially harmed by the

driver's license practice are those who either applied for out of state driver's licenses (and

surrendered their Michigan licenses) despite not meeting the residency requirement in the

state of application, or who applied for a driver's license in states where they satisfied the

residency requirement for receiving a driver's license, but not for voting. The Court therefore

concludes that the number of voters who will be able to meet the injury in fact requirement

for standing, while not zero, is likely to be correspondingly small. For the plaintiffs to be

entitled to a permanent injunction on a theory of representative standing, they will have to

show that at least one member of this group of people is also a member of one of their

organizations. While it is certainly possible that they will be able to make such a showing,

there has been no discovery or any other factual development on this issue in the case --

indeed, both parties affirmatively state that no facts or data exist to resolve the question --

and as a result the Court does not have any confidence that the plaintiffs will be able to do

so. Thus, the plaintiffs' likelihood of success on the merits of the standing issues with regard

to the driver's license practice can best be described at this juncture as questionable.

******

The Court's analysis of the standing issue should not be construed to mitigate what

seems to be the clear unlawfulness of what the Secretary is doing with regard to out of state

driver's license applications. But even if the outcome of the NVRA challenge were

absolutely certain, plaintiffs' overall likelihood of success on the merits can be no greater

than their likelihood of proving their standing. Thus, the plaintiffs' overall likelihood of

success on the merits in the view of the Court is questionable.
28

B. Irreparable Harm.

The injury threatened to their members that establishes the plaintiffs' representative

standing is the deprivation of the right to vote. Authorities are split on the issue of whether

this type of alleged harm is irreparable per se. Compare, e.g., Williams v. Salerno, 792 F.

2d 323, 326 (2d Cir. 1986) ("The registration applicants in this case would certainly suffer

irreparable harm if their right to vote were impinged upon"), with Chisom v. Roemer, 853

F. 2d 1186, 1188-89 (5th Cir. 1988) ("We are not prepared to adopt a per se rule in such

a vital area of federal-state relations.") While the Sixth Circuit appears not to have decided

the issue, even the leading case declining to adopt a per se rule, Chisom, was a decision

on whether to enjoin an election for state office, and not whether to require a state to permit

more persons to vote in a federal election. Chisom, 853 F. 2d at 1189. Even in that

context, the 5th Circuit recognized that a preliminary injunction is appropriate "when the

threatened harm would impair the court's ability to grant an effective remedy." Id. (citation

omitted). In this case, where state sovereignty is not squarely implicated and a federal

election is approaching rapidly enough that, according to the defendants, delaying the

issuance of an injunction until close to the election date would risk organizational chaos in

the Michigan Department of State, the Court finds that any disenfranchisement effected by

the undeliverable ID or driver's license practices would indeed constitute irreparable harm.

Thus, the only consideration mitigating the strength of this factor in favor of an

injunction is the possibility that the harm might not actually be suffered by any of the

plaintiffs' members. With respect to the practices at issue here, however, the irreparable

harm inquiry diverges from the Court's analysis on standing because the plaintiffs' standing

is predicated not on actual harm to their members, but rather on a risk of harm that may or

may not occur in any individual case. This possibility -- that the potential harm that confers
29

standing on the plaintiffs may not actually materialize with respect to any of their members

-- is clearly relevant to the question of whether plaintiffs will suffer irreparable harm without

a preliminary injunction. In this light, each of the practices will be analyzed in turn.

1. The undeliverable ID practice.

The plaintiffs have demonstrated a strong likelihood of proving standing to challenge

the undeliverable ID practice because every eligible Michigan voter who registers is at risk

of being stricken from the rolls until he or she actually receives an ID card. But, since only

1,500 registrants have been removed in this fashion this year-- as compared to more than

70,000 per year as a result of the driver's license practice-- only a very small fraction of the

people who register actually suffer the harm of being removed from the rolls, and thus

deprived of the right to vote.

Further, at the hearing held in this matter, the defendants stressed that a voter whose

registration has been "rejected" pursuant to the undeliverable ID practice may nonetheless

cast a regular ballot if he or she presents a receipt of registration at the polls. This

obviously will prevent disenfranchisement, but only for those voters who bring receipts with

them to the polls. Presentation of a receipt, however, is not required of other voters, and

since many or most Michigan residents removed from the lists pursuant to the

undeliverable ID practice will in reality not receive separate notice of removal, they will likely

not even know that their registrations have been rejected, and thus will be unaware of the

necessity of bringing their receipts to the polls even if they have in fact retained them.

Further, the plaintiffs argue that voters who register by mail do not even receive receipts

in the first place, and as a result, the number of disenfranchisements prevented by the

possibility of presenting a voter registration receipt is likely to be small. 
 12 The defendants also argue, in defense of both the undeliverable ID and driver's license

practices, that because a voter whose name has been removed from the rolls can always cast a

provisional ballot, no harm is done by the removal. Plaintiffs respond that under both federal and

state law a voter's eligibility for purposes of counting a provisional ballot must be determined by the

same standards as is her eligibility to cast a regular ballot. See 42 U.S.C. § 15482(a)(4); M.C.L.

§ 18.183. Thus, even if a voter who does not appear on the rolls is permitted to cast a provisional

ballot, this only delays the inevitable disenfranchisement.

30

The defendants additionally argue that both the undeliverable ID practice includes the

sending of a postage-prepaid, preaddressed reply card, which the voter can mail back and

be restored to the rolls. While this additional practice will not cure the deficiency of the

programs under the NVRA, if substantial numbers of eligible voters actually return cards

it would reduce the number of persons who are harmed by the practices, and thus the

likelihood that any of that group are members of the plaintiffs. 

There are three possible objections to effectiveness of this practice. First, if the

defendants' rationale for removing a voter from the rolls is that the voter does not live at the

address they have on file, then mailing a notice to that address is a poor way of permitting

the voter to clarify that the voter is still a permanent Michigan resident. It seems likely that

even if they remain eligible Michigan voters, a substantial number of registrants will not

receive the reply card, or at least not receive the card in time to return it, for the very same

reasons that led the defendants to believe that they have abandoned their residences.

Second, even if voters receive the reply cards, at least some of them will not fill them out

(or not fill them out properly), and the NVRA does not permit Michigan from removing them

based on their failure to do so. Finally, even voters who receive the cards and return them

will have been wrongfully taken off the rolls until the date that their cards are processed and

their registrations are reactivated. The combination of these three objections convinces the

Court that, while this backup procedure reduces somewhat the likelihood that plaintiffs'

members will be injured by these undeliverable ID practice, it by no means eliminates it.12
31

It is undisputed that more than one thousand voters have been disqualified so far in

2008 pursuant to the undeliverable ID practice. But neither side has provided the Court

with any information as to how many of these disqualifications are actually wrongful.

Plaintiffs argue that some simply must be wrongful, because human error in addressing and

delivering voter IDs is inevitable, and the Court agrees with the plaintiffs' analysis. The

Court, however, also regards the likely number of these errors to be small enough as to

raise serious questions about whether the undeliverable ID practice will actually adversely

affect any of plaintiffs' membership if a preliminary injunction is not entered. Overall, and

based upon the analysis set forth here, the Court concludes that although the number of

plaintiffs' members likely to be adversely affected by the practice is relatively low, these

members face certain irreparable harm.

2. The driver's license practice

The Court has already noted that the plaintiffs have only a questionable likelihood of

proving their allegations of standing to challenge the driver's license practice, because of

the low likelihood that one of the (probably) small number of Michigan voters harmed by

the practice is a member of one of the plaintiffs. This alone would dictate a conclusion that

any likelihood of irreparable harm to plaintiffs' members is insufficient to weigh in favor of

a preliminary injunction. Additionally, the Court recognizes that the reply-card component

of the driver's license practice, although subject to the same shortcomings identified in

connection with the undeliverable ID reply cards, does provide some out of state driver's

license applicants with the opportunity to reaffirm their Michigan residence and remain on

the rolls. Again, this does not satisfy the NVRA, but it does provide some registrants the

chance to avoid disenfranchisement, and thus likely decreases even further the number of

persons who suffer irreparable harm as a result of the driver's license practice. For these
 13 The defendants claim that this task would be nearly impossible. Because it also has

significant implications for voter fraud, this claim and the reasons for it are discussed more fully

below, with respect to its impact on the public interest.

32

reasons, the Court is unable to conclude at this juncture that any plaintiffs' members are

likely to suffer irreparable harm if a preliminary injunction is not entered against the driver's

license practice.

C. Balance of Hardships from Entry of an Injunction.

The defendants argue that making the changes that the plaintiffs seek in their motion

for preliminary injunction would impose serious administrative difficulties, especially if an

injunction is entered close to the November, 2008 election. For instance, the defendants

claim that the only method of restoring the active status of the cancelled registrants would,

if implemented, also affect the registrations of anyone who first applied for a driver's license

in another state and then re-registered in Michigan. These voters, according to the

defendants, would see their QVF addresses revert to the ones that were current before

their initial out of state driver's license application. If the Department of State is forced to

deal with these and other difficulties -- not to mention the task of identifying which

registrations are entitled to reactivation13 -- the result, the defendants warn, could be their

inability to deal with the other requirements of conducting a smooth election. The Court

fully agrees with the State on this issue and makes what it regards a common sense

conclusion that the logistical problems involved with restoring a large number voters to the

rolls, as the plaintiffs request in their motion, are likely to be significant. 

Plaintiffs contend, however, and rightly so in the judgment of the Court, that any

hardship suffered by the state of Michigan and its officials as a result of the entry of the

requested injunction would be largely self-imposed. Two reasons support the Court's

conclusion: First, the NVRA language governing these practices is clear enough that the
33

defendants should have been on notice of the potential that they might be found unlawful --

as well as being on notice of the kind of remedial action that might be required in the event

of such a finding. Second, at the hearing held in this matter, the plaintiffs represented --

without any sort of contest from the defendants -- that the plaintiffs explained their

objections to these practices to the defendants as early as July, 2007, two months before

the filing of this lawsuit. The counsel for the plaintiffs also asserted -- and the state of

Michigan did not contest -- that no official from the state met with the plaintiffs to address,

resolve, or even respond to their claims. Thus, the state defendants have actually had a

considerable period of time in which to consider how to smoothly implement the sorts of

relief the plaintiffs are asking for here. If the defendants have failed to undertake such

considerations, any hardship faced by the defendants now is squarely attributable as much

to the lack of preparation as to the actual changes the plaintiffs are asking for, and should

be discounted accordingly.

As a result, the Court finds that the potential hardship to the defendants weighs only

very slightly against the entry of a preliminary injunction. Additionally, the Court notes that

due to the much larger potential number of voters who might have to be restored to

comprehensively address the driver's license practice, coupled with the Court's lessened

ability to determine how many voters will actually be harmed by the practice, this factor

weighs somewhat more perceptibly against restoring those voters than it does for the

voters affected by the undeliverable ID practice.

D. The Public Interest.

The defendants argue that the injunction requested by the plaintiffs here would

harm the public interest by opening the door to voter fraud. This is true, they contend, is

because Michigan's system has been set up on the premise that no one whose voter ID is
34

returned as undeliverable, or who applies for a driver's license in another state, is entitled

to vote in Michigan. As a result, the state has no means of determining whether a

registrant whose ID has been returned as undeliverable is actually a resident of Michigan,

or whether an applicant for an out of state driver's license has designated, as permitted by

the NVRA, that the application is not to be used for voting purposes. The Court will now

examine the impact an injunction might have on the public interest in regard to each of

Michigan's challenged practices. 

1. Undeliverable ID practice.

The defendants' invocation of the public interest on the issue of undeliverable IDs

amounts to an argument that the procedures required by the NVRA pose an unacceptable

risk of fraud to the state of Michigan. The state is rightly concerned that some, and

perhaps many, of the "rejected" voter registrations were fraudulent. Whatever the merits

of that concern may be, however, in the context of the current litigation, the concern has

been rejected by Congress when it enacted the terms of the NVRA.

 "[T]he public has an interest in the enforcement of federal statutes." Coxcom, Inc. v.

Chaffee , 536 F. 3d 101, 112 (1st Cir. 2008). Whether or not a person is actually entitled

to vote in Michigan, the NVRA clearly requires that once a person is a "registrant" he or she

may not be removed from the voter rolls except by operation of the procedures laid out in

the Act. Although it might be desirable for the defendants to develop and implement other

measures to remove ineligible voters from the rolls before they become NVRA "registrants",

the defendants' acts in doing so -- whatever they may be -- are not a prerequisite to the

NVRA's enforcement. Likewise, the fact that the defendants could have developed a lawful

policy that would have removed some of the same registrations from the rolls does not

detract substantially from the illegal manner in which each and every one of these removals
35

actually did occur. The public interest cannot weigh heavily against restoring voters to the

status that, given Michigan's current voter registration regime, those voters had been

entitled to all along pursuant to the applicable federal law. 

2. Driver's license practice.

With respect to the driver's license practice, the Court finds that the defendants'

concerns carry more weight. Because a great number of out of state driver's license

applicants no doubt simultaneously register to vote (or decline to designate their change

of address as being for voting purposes), many -- and perhaps most -- of the removals

under this practice were perfectly lawful under the NVRA. Since the parties have no way

of knowing which applicants did what in this regard, however, the only way for the

defendants to immediately restore any wrongfully-cancelled registrations, and to avoid any

further wrongful cancellations, is apparently to undo every cancellation pursuant to the

driver's license practice, and to stop entering any further cancellations pursuant thereto.

The result would be returning to "active" status the registrations of up to 200,000 voters,

an unknown but probably large number of whom were initially removed from the rolls in

accordance with the NVRA in the first place and who are in fact no longer eligible to vote

in Michigan. 

Plaintiffs have offered no evidence contradicting these claims by defendants, but

assert that if they are true, the burden of developing a method for avoiding the restoration

of voters who are removable under the NVRA properly lies on the defendants. This is very

likely the case, but the Court cannot ignore the fact that the defendants' claimed inability

to immediately develop such a method will have a significant impact on the public interest.

The public has an interest on both sides of this case. On the one hand, there is

undoubtedly a strong public interest in ensuring that all eligible voters are able to cast their
 14 "Fraudulent" here refers both to active attempts to circumvent the election laws, and to

situations in which a voter is simply mistaken as to which state he or she is eligible to vote in.

 15 Disenfranchisement of eligible voters also risks distorting election outcomes, though if one

assumes that anti-fraud measures will prevent more fraudulent than legitimate votes, then such

measures will still have a net effect of reducing rather than exacerbating these sorts of distortions.

36

votes in an election. On the other hand, the public has a strong interest in the prevention

of fraudulent voting as well.14 A question exists as to whether the Secretary's practices at

issue here removed more ineligible than eligible voters from the rolls, but in determining

where the balance of the public interest lies the interests providing resolution to the

question cannot be weighed against each other on a one-for-one basis. It seems likely that

the portion of ineligible voters removed from the rolls who will attempt to vote after

becoming ineligible is smaller than the portion of wrongfully-removed eligible voters who

will show up at the polls, and so the public interest in removing ineligible voters must be

discounted accordingly. Additionally, the harm from disenfranchisement is concrete and

serious even if it occurs to only one individual, whereas the harms from fraudulent voting --

loss of public confidence in the election process and the risk of distorted outcomes -- are

more diffuse, depending as much on the volume of fraudulent votes as on the fact that any

one of them is being cast.15

The risk of fraudulent voting must nevertheless be a serious consideration in deciding

whether to require the state to restore to active status (or refrain from cancelling in the first

place) the registrations of some 200,000 voters, a great number of whom are likely not

entitled to vote. As noted previously, neither side has provided any data relating to how

many of the registrations cancelled pursuant to the driver's license procedure were those

of eligible Michigan voters. On the record available at this preliminary stage, the Court

concludes that this is likely to be quite a small portion of the cancellations, and
37

consequently that the public interest in preventing the mass reactivation of ineligible voters

is of significant weight. 

Based on the foregoing, the Court draws slightly differing conclusions with respect to

the impact on the public interest of the prohibitory and mandatory aspects of the relief from

the driver's license practice requested by the plaintiffs. Currently, the Secretary is

cancelling voter registrations based on out of state driver's license application, without even

having before her the key piece of information necessary to determine whether the NVRA

permits such removals; that is, whether the applicant has designated the change of

address as not for voting purposes. This is unlawful, and the public policies in favor of

preventing unlawful disenfranchisement and enforcing federal statutes clearly dictate that

it be stopped. This would in no way obstruct the secretary's task of avoiding the harm to

the public interest that would result from retaining ineligible voters on the rolls, since she

has been and will remain free to adopt any method for doing so that is permitted by the

NVRA.

With respect to cancellations that have already occurred, however, the NVRA has

already been violated, and the only question is how that violation can be remedied in a

manner most consistent with the public interest. Restoring voters who were not entitled

under the NVRA to remain on the rolls is to be avoided if possible. Given the defendants'

claims as to the information they have, a mass reactivation of the type requested by the

plaintiffs would risk grave harm to the public interest by permitting a large number of

ineligible voters to vote. Accordingly, the Court finds that this factor weighs rather strongly

against the mandatory relief requested by plaintiffs.
38

IV. Summary and Form of Relief

A. The Undeliverable ID Practice.

 As to the undeliverable ID practice, the Court concludes that the plaintiffs have made

a strong showing of success on the merits and a substantial but not overly strong showing

of irreparable harm. The prohibitory injunction requested by the plaintiffs would work very

little hardship on the defendants and would be in the public interest. The mandatory

injunction would result in some, mostly self-imposed, hardship for defendants, but entering

the injunction would also serve the public interest by restoring the registrations of voters

entitled under the NVRA to be on the rolls. Accordingly, the Court will grant both prohibitory

and mandatory injunctions with respect to the undeliverable ID practice.

A question remains as to the proper form of this relief. While these registrants seem

entitled under the NVRA to have their cancellations reversed, the defendants point out (and

the plaintiffs do not dispute) that because their IDs were returned as undeliverable, there

is reason to doubt whether some of them actually live in Michigan, and thus whether they

are entitled to vote here. This suggests that, after reversing the cancellations of these

voters' registrations, it would be appropriate for the defendants to take additional steps to

verify the Michigan residence of the voters before permitting them to vote. They plaintiffs,

however, briefly argue that both the Equal Protection Clause and a provision of the Civil

Rights Act, codified at 42 U.S.C. § 1971(a)(2)(A), prohibit treating voters whose original IDs

are returned as undeliverable any differently from those whose duplicate IDs are similarly

returned. Since a voter whose duplicate ID is returned as undeliverable is marked as

"challenge" on the QVF, the plaintiffs seem to argue that this is the only step defendants

should be permitted to take to verify the restored voters' residence.
 16 There accordingly is no need to resolve the parties' dispute over whether this federal statute

can be enforced through a private lawsuit under 28 U.S.C. § 1983, or only by the Attorney General.

Cf. McKay v. Thompson, 226 F. 2d 752 (6th Cir. 2000) (holding that 42 U.S.C. § 1971(a) is not

directly enforceable in a private action).

39

The Court does not agree. The relevant portion of the Civil Rights Act prohibits the

application of different "standards, practices or procedures" in determining whether any two

citizens of a state are qualified to vote. This simply requires that if Michigan wishes to

impose unique procedural requirements on the basis of a registrant's original voter ID being

returned as undeliverable, it must impose those requirements on everyone whose original

ID is returned as undeliverable. In the Court's view, the treatment of registrants whose

other documents are similarly returned is simply irrelevant under the statute.16 The Court

likewise does not consider these requirements to be any sort of disparate treatment

unrelated to a legitimate state interest, as the plaintiffs argue pursuant to their equalprotection claim. The Court makes a common sense conclusion that a person whose first

ID card is returned as undeliverable to his or her registered address is less likely to actually

reside at that address -- or anywhere else in Michigan -- than a person who has previously

received an ID card at his or her Michigan address but now appears no longer to live there.

Since the state certainly has an interest in preventing non-residents from voting within its

borders, the state is therefore entitled to draw distinctions between these two different

classes of persons.

As a result, the defendants need not treat voters whose original IDs are returned as

undeliverable identically to any other class of voters. This Court's injunction will not prevent

them from requiring of such voters whatever further proofs of residence may be necessary

or permitted under state law and the NVRA. What the defendants must do, however, is
40

restore the cancelled registrations to some status that will not by itself, as their current

status does, require the rejection of a ballot cast by these voters. 

B. The out of state driver's license application practice.

With respect to the out of state driver's license application practice, the Court

concludes that there is only a questionable likelihood that any of plaintiffs' members will

suffer an injury in fact, and thus that plaintiffs have only a questionable likelihood of

success on the merits on the issue of their standing to sue. This weak showing of injury

also indicates a relatively low probability that plaintiffs' members will suffer irreparable harm

without a preliminary injunction. A prohibitory injunction would involve some hardship to

the defendants, and a mandatory injunction would involve considerably greater hardship,

but both sets of hardships would be largely self-imposed. Finally, a prohibitory injunction

would be in the public interest, but mandatorily enjoining the defendants on this issue would

not.

Weighing these factors, a preliminary injunction against the driver's license practice

is not appropriate on this record. Nevertheless, it bears repeating that this practice does

appear to be in violation of the NVRA. Should the plaintiffs be able to shore up their

standing in this case, it is the Court's hope that both sides will cooperate in developing a

method by which any voters who have wrongfully had their registrations cancelled can be

restored to the rolls, without resorting to a mass reactivation. After the defendants answer

the complaint and the parties proceed through discovery, information and evidence from

the state of Michigan should be able to bring light to the question of how the practice should

be changed.
 17 The clerk makes a much more convoluted argument with regard to the out of state driver's

license application practice, but since the nature of the Court's relief will not entail the issuance of

an injunction on that issue, the Court finds it unnecessary to address the clerk's arguments on the

drivers license issue here.

41

C. The Ypsilanti City Clerk.

A further word is appropriate to address the arguments of the City Clerk for the City

of Ypsilanti, Michigan ("the clerk"). In a separate brief in response to this motion, the clerk

claimed that because of staff and budget shortages she does not, and will not before the

upcoming election, remove voter names from the rolls pursuant to the undeliverable ID

practice.17 If this is true, then the likelihood of irreparable harm to plaintiffs' members from

the clerk would be reduced to minuscule proportions. The burden of an injunction on the

clerk herself, however, would be correspondingly reduced, as would any impact on the

public interest. The plaintiffs' strong likelihood of success on the merits would remain

unchanged.

Since the Court's injunction against the other defendants will preclude them not only

from personally marking voters' QVF entries with a disqualifying status, but also from

directing or encouraging others to do so, the foregoing makes it unnecessary to enjoin the

clerk from doing so as well. If the plaintiffs present the Court with information that her

actions fail to correspond with her representations in her brief, however, such an injunction

will promptly issue.

CONCLUSION

WHEREFORE, it is hereby ORDERED that the defendants Michigan Secretary of

State and the Michigan Director of Elections:
42

(1) Immediately discontinue their practice of cancelling or rejecting a voter's registration

based upon the return of the voter's original voter identification card as undeliverable;

(2) Remove the "rejected" marking in the QVF from the registrations of all voters whose

original voter IDs have been returned as undeliverable since January 1, 2006 until the

present, unless rejection was warranted for some other lawful reason;

(3) Make no other designation, including but not limited to "cancelled," in these voters'

registration records in the QVF or elsewhere, that will prevent their ballots from being

counted if they appear at the polls and give whatever further proof of Michigan residence

is required or permitted under applicable state and federal law; unless such a designation

is warranted by written notice from the voter or for some reason other than change of

residence;

(4) Preserve and not destroy until after December 31, 2009, any and all records relating

to maintenance of Michigan's voter registration files that have, since January 1, 2006,

resulted in the cancellation of the registration of voters who have applied for out of state

driver’s licenses, or the cancellation or rejection of voters’ registrations based upon the

return of original voter identification cards ; and

(5) Give no order, direction, or encouragement that any other government official or any

other person engage in activity hereby prohibited to them.
43

It is further ORDERED that the defendants Michigan Secretary of State, the Michigan

Director of Elections, and the Ypsilanti City Clerk file an answer to the complaint in this

action no later than fourteen days from the date of this Order.

SO ORDERED.

s/Stephen J. Murphy, III 

STEPHEN J. MURPHY, III

United States District Judge

Dated: October 13, 2008

I hereby certify that a copy of the foregoing document was served upon the parties and/or

counsel of record on October 13, 2008, by electronic and/or ordinary mail.

s/Alissa Greer 

Case Manager