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CONNERLY EXPOSED
ANTI-AFFIRMATIVE ACTION BALLOT CHALLENGED
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Press Conference Thurs. 4/18 at 4:00PM 
Law offices of Scheff & Washington, 65 Cadillac Square 
(Cadillac Tower Building), Suite 2900, Downtown Detroit

Contact: Luke Massie 313-407-2915

The civil rights campaign Operation King's Dream and BAMN are
filing a legal challenge with the State Board of Canvassers
today, demanding that Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action
initiative (MCRI) be thrown out. An extensive, ongoing survey
conducted by Operation King's Dream reveal a shocking pattern of
pervasive deception and fraud directed specifically at
Michigan's black voters.

"Out of the sample of 500 petition signatures selected by the
State to verify the validity and genuineness of the petition, we
found only 37 people who knew what they were signing and meant
to sign it. The vast majority of signatures are fraudulent,"
said Luke Massie, chair of Operation King's Dream.

"Deception is the key mechanism of MCRI. Petition circulators
were encouraged to lie, and the name and language of the
petition were purposefully misleading. Additionally, many of the
petition signatures appear to be doctored," said Shanta Driver,
attorney for Operation King's Dream.

One of these voters was Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Robert
L. Ziolkowski. Outside a CVS drugstore on the East side of
Detroit, Judge Ziolkowski "was solicited to sign a petition
purportedly as a pro affirmative action initiative in opposition
of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative." After signing, Judge
Ziolkowski went back and struck his name. When Judge Ziolkowski
"confronted her about her misrepresentations, she said that was
what she was told to say when she was hired to circulate the
petition." A second Circuit Court judge, Archie Hayman from
Genesee County, was also fraudulently induced into signing the
petition and has produced an affidavit to that effect.

Operation King's Dream is challenging more than 300 signatures
from of the 500-signature sample, which include 85 affidavits
that testify to signers having been deceived with the State
Board of Canvassers. There will be 5 affidavits of petition
circulators who testify that they were mislead as to the
character of the petition and therefore passed that
misinformation on to the people that they asked to sign.

The character of the fraud and deception as a conscious policy
is made clear in part by the affidavits of petition circulators
who testify that they were deceived about the nature of the
initiative. These circulators are demanding that all of the
thousands of signatures they collected be removed since all the
people they asked to sign were deceived unwittingly by the
circulators themselves.

There are also numerous signatures of people who are not
register to vote and people who appear not exist at all.

"We deplore this policy of deception, especially because its
sheer cynicism and recklessness makes even worse the tendency of
MCRI's campaign to promote the racial polarization of our
state," said George Washington, attorney for Operation King's
Dream.

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