Court Opinion

ID: 9704129
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:23:29.912407+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:57.082499
License: Public Domain

T. E. Brennan, J.
(dissenting). I cannot agree with the conclusion that Michigan’s two-year reregistration statute places an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote.
The citizen who fails to vote, despite his right to vote by absentee ballot, for a period of two years, misses one or two general elections, one or two primary elections and an undetermined number of municipal primary and general elections, special elections, school elections, village elections and the like.
*521My Brother suggests that such long continued estrangement from the exercise of the franchise could easily be laid to illness, travel, lack of babysitters, or conscious protest against the candidates.
The first three grounds would entitle the voter to an absentee ballot. And the blank space provided for write-in candidates invites conscious protest.
The Legislature has found as a logical inference that the citizen who has failed to vote for two years —eschewing as many as ten consecutive opportunities to exercise his franchise — has probably moved.
That inference is logical. It is common sense. It comports with the experience of people in our highly mobile society.
The Legislature has authorized and required election clerks to eliminate such stale registrations as one means of keeping an up to date record of eligible voters.
What is this unconstitutional burden which is allegedly placed upon the franchise?
My Brother, with printers’ ellipsis, omitted from his statutory quotation the following notice, required to be given voters before their names are removed from the rolls; (MCLA 168.509; MSA 6.1509):
“NOTICE OF SUSPENSION OF REGISTRATION
“You are hereby notified that your registration as a qualified elector will be canceled according to state law, for having failed to vote, to continue or reinstate your registration or to record a change of address within the past 2 years unless you apply for a continuation within 30 days from this date. You may continue your registration by signing the statement below and returning it to this office or by applying in person.
*522“APPLICATION FOE CONTINUATION OF EEGTSTEATION
“I hereby certify that I reside at the address given below and apply for continuation of my registration as a voter. My mother’s maiden name was
“Signature of elector ........................
“Present resident address....................”
Sign and return. Even the paper is supplied. The voter must write down his mother’s maiden name, and his own name arid address. That much penmanship is equally required at the polling place on election day.
Address an envelope and send it to the clerk. If that be an unconscionable burden upon the franchise, what of the need to apply for an absent voter’s ballot, or the need to stand in line at the polling place?
My Brother concedes that Michigan has a “compelling state interest” in maintaining an accurate up to date registry of qualified voters.
The issue here then is not whether Michigan has a compelling state interest — but whether its conceded interest is properly served by the cancellation of registrations for nonvoting.
Beare v Smith, 321 F Supp 1100 (SD Tex, 1971), relied upon by my Brother was not a case involving cancellation for nonvoting. Unlike Michigan, Texas required annual registration.
The Attorney General’s brief quotes from Beare:
“It is beyond doubt that the present Texas voter registration procedures tend to disenfranchise multitudes of Texas citizens otherwise qualified to vote. The present system, being a direct descendant of the poll tax, Gonzales v. Steven, 427 S.W.2d 694 (Tex. Civ. App.—Corpus Christi 1968, n.r.e.), has *523all of the features which the poll tax system had except the payment of an annual fee. The closing of registration so far in advance of the general election, in the years one is held, perpetuates the obstacles the twenty-fourth amendment prohibits. The evidence presented in this case shows that if the annual registration obstacle were removed over one million Texans would be eligible to vote that would not have been eligible with that requirement. Without annual registration, the number of persons who would actually vote would be increased by about the same number. Similarly, if registration were open until a month before the general election and had been open for the preceding eight months, voter registration would increase by over one million. In short, the present system closes the election hall door to a million citizens.”
About the only similarity between Beare v Smith, supra, and the case before this Court is the fact that both cases have something to do with elections;
The fact is that Michigan is one of 37 states maintaining permanent registration systems which provide for cancellation after a designated period of nonvoting.
The majority opinion makes an illusory argument.
It asserts that the purpose and sole justification for nonvoter cancellation lies in the state’s interest in preventing fraud.
It then proceeds to argue that cancellation for nonvoting is not necessary to prevent fraud.
But the prevention of fraud is not the sole purpose of voter registration. Orderly elections, convenience of the voters, accuracy of returns, public confidence in the electoral process, organization of precincts, preparation of ballots, employment of election workers; these and many other considera*524tions all depend upon an up to date, reliable list of qualified electors.
“Voter fraud” as envisioned in the majority opinion could be prevented without any registration of electors whatsoever. (Consider the expediency of photographing or fingerprinting every citizen who offers to vote and prosecuting those who vote twice.)
An underlying problem here is that there are a substantial number of our citizens who are not merely mobile — they are more aptly described as migrant or itinerant.
Much of the social legislation of this century has been aimed at reducing that unfortunate condition. Housing, jobs and similar public concerns are related to it. The Model Cities and Model Neighborhood programs; the decentralization of schools and other current developments and programs are all part of a wider effort to bring a sense of community to those who have for too long been subjected to rootless anonymity in the vast heartland of our cities.
That constituency will not be well served by what we do today. True, the resources of the plaintiff organizations will be relieved of the burden of periodic registration drives. But it cannot be supposed that such organizations will henceforth be indifferent to the matter of “getting out the vote”.
Plaintiffs’ brief suggests that citizens can, and often do, vote where they do not live. Our decision today will exacerbate that problem; it presages the day of central registration, factory gate and supermarket ballot boxes.
In these days when the young, the disenchanted, the ignored and the used are demanding more self determination, our decision is retrogressive.
*525Neighborhood voting is a long standing American tradition deeply rooted in onr concepts of personal freedom and independent citizenship.
This is hardly the time to encroach upon that tradition by lumping city voters together and treating them as interchangeable, temporary inhabitants of interchangeable indistinguishable urban neighborhoods.
Black, J., concurred with T. E. Brennan, J.