Affirmative action foes say effort on track

• Hater Group says petition deadline will be met

The state petition drive and campaign to ban affirmative action in state government and university admissions may have lost its high profile in recent months, but it is still active and organizers say they expect to have enough signatures by January to put the issue before Michigan voters. The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative says it has more than half of the nearly 318,000 signatures needed to place a question on the statewide ballot in 2006. Legal challenges and controversy forced the group to scrap its plan to place the question on the November 2004 ballot, but it restarted its campaign in July, using volunteers and paid signature gatherers. Once enough signatures are gathered, the group will switch its focus from the petition drive to a "grass-roots campaign" in support of banning racial preferences, said Chetly Zarko, MCRI's spokesman. The campaign started after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2003 to uphold the University of Michigan Law School's consideration of race in admissions. At the same time, the court struck down the U-M undergraduate school's race-conscious policy as too formulaic, but allowed U-M to revise its admissions policies to still consider race as a factor in increasing campus diversity. [more]

• UGA: Let race count;Diversity would be one factor in admissions policy [more]