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]
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