Lose in court? Take it to the ballot box. Michigan opponents of affirmative action were defeated in the judicial system but called on Ward Connerly to help them win voters.IN NOVEMBER, MICHIGAN VOTERS approved Proposal 2, barring state entities, including colleges, from considering race as a factor in school admissions and job contracts. Some people, however, might have thought they were voting in favor of affirmative action affirmative action, in the United States, programs to overcome the effects of past societal discrimination by allocating jobs and resources to members of specific groups, such as minorities and women. and equity for communities of color not of the white race; - commonly meaning, esp. in the United States, of negro blood, pure or mixed. See also: Color . That's partly because Prop 2 was called the "Michigan Civil Rights Initiative The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI), or Proposal 2 (Michigan 06-2), was a ballot initiative in the U.S. state of Michigan that passed into Michigan Constitutional law by a 58% to 42% margin on November 7, 2006, according to results officially certified by the ," and in getting the initiative on the ballot, the group sponsoring it misled voters, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. a federal judge. Michigan became the center of the affirmative action debate in 2003 as the Supreme Court considered two lawsuits against the University of Michigan (body, education) University of Michigan - A large cosmopolitan university in the Midwest USA. Over 50000 students are enrolled at the University of Michigan's three campuses. The students come from 50 states and over 100 foreign countries. . Jennifer Gratz, a white woman, sued the school on the grounds that she had been discriminated against because the school considered race as a factor in a student's application. Gratz lost that fight. The Supreme Court ruled that school officials couldn't assign points based on someone's race, but they could consider race as a factor in admissions. According to Gratz, she picked up the phone after losing that fight and called Ward Connerly, the former University of California The University of California has a combined student body of more than 191,000 students, over 1,340,000 living alumni, and a combined systemwide and campus endowment of just over $7.3 billion (8th largest in the United States). Regent who spearheaded Prop 209, which banned affirmative action from California state colleges in 1996. Connerly had already taken the fight to Washington in 1998 and won there. Both states have seen a drop in admissions of Black students into their most selective state colleges. Having lost in the judicial system and seeing Connerly's wins in elections, Gratz decided to give it a try. To get the needed signatures to put the initiative before voters, Gratz and Connerly's team collected more than a half million signatures. How? By telling voters that they were helping to put new civil rights legislation on the ballot. That's what activists claimed in court last fall in a federal lawsuit charging Gratz's group with violating the Voting Rights Act Voting Rights Act Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 1965 to ensure the voting rights of African Americans. Though the Constitution's 15th Amendment (passed 1870) had guaranteed the right to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” of 1965. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In September, with the election weeks away, U.S. District Court Judge Arthur Tarnow ruled that Gratz's group didn't violate the voting rights Voting rights The right to vote on matters that are put to a vote of security holders. For example the right to vote for directors. voting rights The type of voting and the amount of control held by the owners of a class of stock. of Blacks, because it had targeted all Michigan voters with the same message. The group had, Judge Tarnow wrote, "engaged in voter fraud." Connerly has said he doesn't want to win the fight against affirmative action on a state-by-state basis. Even with his victories, elections are dicey affairs where anything can blow up. Just three weeks before the November election, Connerly and Gratz had to defend Prop 2 after the KKK distributed 6,000 newsletters with quotes from Gratz attacking her opposition. Connerly distanced himself from the KKK, but he was recently caught on tape saying, "If the Ku Klux Klan Ku Klux Klan (k  ' klŭks klăn), designation mainly given to two distinct secret societies that played a part in American history, although other less important groups have also used thinks that equality is right, God bless them. Thank them for finally reaching the point where logic and reason are applying, are being applied instead of hate." (For the transcript go to www.affirmativeactionadvocacy.com. You can also see a trailer of the video ARISE: The Battle Over Affirmative Action.)
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