{"id":5189,"date":"2022-04-01T09:46:05","date_gmt":"2022-04-01T13:46:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/?p=5189"},"modified":"2022-04-01T09:46:46","modified_gmt":"2022-04-01T13:46:46","slug":"perry-on-the-messy-history-of-michigans-purity-clause-jaryehperry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/index.php\/2022\/04\/01\/perry-on-the-messy-history-of-michigans-purity-clause-jaryehperry\/","title":{"rendered":"Perry on The Messy History of Michigan&#8217;s Purity Clause @Jaryehperry @michlawreview"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Joshua Perry is publishing <a href=\"https:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4030721&amp;dgcid=ejournal_htmlemail_law:society:legislation:ejournal_abstractlink\">The Messy History of Michigan&#8217;s Purity Clause<\/a> in the Michigan Law Review Online. Here is the abstract.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Since 1850, Michigan\u2019s constitution has authorized the state legislature to pass laws protecting \u201cthe purity of elections.\u201d Despite its racial resonance and emergence from a constitutional convention that proudly denied Black Michiganders the vote, the \u201cPurity Clause\u201d has recently been cited by state courts to legitimize anti-\u201cvoter fraud\u201d laws \u2013 like the state\u2019s voter ID law \u2013 that constrict voting rights and disproportionately disenfranchise voters of color.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s true that, in the years surrounding Michigan\u2019s founding, the concept of protecting election \u201cpurity\u201d seems to have extended to excluding unlawful voters. But there is strong evidence that the Purity Clause was intended and understood to include three other meanings, in 1850 and thereafter. First: The record of the 1850 constitutional convention shows that the Clause was enacted as a way of preventing the right people \u2013 people who were otherwise eligible to vote \u2013 from voting for the wrong reasons. It was aimed at people who \u201cwager\u201d on elections, and the \u201cintoxicated,\u201d and at the \u201cinsane.\u201d Like today\u2019s voter suppression laws, in other words, it was really a way of controlling election outcomes by limiting who votes. Second: To the (white) voters who ratified the 1850 constitution, election \u201cpurity\u201d likely signified racist exclusion. Neither of Michigan\u2019s subsequent constitutional conventions, in reenacting the clause, have grappled with this original public meaning, which remains encoded in the persistent language of \u201cpurity.\u201d Third: Alongside its uglier meanings, the Purity Clause has long been applied by the courts to mandate equal treatment at the polls for politically-disfavored individuals and groups.<\/p>\n<p>The account in this essay shows why Michigan courts should (at a minimum) hesitate and inquire far more deeply before invoking the Clause in future voting rights litigation \u2013 including in the brewing fight over a voter suppression initiative that seems likely to become law this year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Download the text of the essay from SSRN at the link.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=HedgehogsFoxes\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joshua Perry is publishing The Messy History of Michigan&#8217;s Purity Clause in the Michigan Law Review Online. Here is the abstract. Since 1850, Michigan\u2019s constitution has authorized the state legislature to pass laws protecting&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[150],"tags":[529],"class_list":["post-5189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-history","tag-legal-history"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pasVL2-1lH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5189"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5191,"href":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5189\/revisions\/5191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgehogsandfoxes.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}