LANSING, Mich. — The Michigan GOP gubernatorial field was cut in half Thursday, after nominating petitions for five candidates were found to allegedly contain thousands and thousands of forged signatures.
Frontrunners James Craig – a former Detroit police chief – and businessman Perry Johnson, along with candidates Donna Brandenburg, Michael Brown and Michael Markey all failed to collect the 15,000 legitimate signatures necessary to enter the August primary race.
The findings were announced Monday. The five candidates, who placed the blame on rogue circulators and the Michigan Board of Canvassers at their meeting on Thursday, claim they weren’t made aware of the issue until this week, leaving almost no time to correct or respond to the errors.
“They let this go for almost two months and all of a sudden ambushed all of us,” said Donna Brandenburg, a candidate whose petition was disqualified Thursday. “If we had found this out in March when they knew, we would’ve been able to toss everything and refill those signatures. They didn’t, they withheld information from us and it was knowingly done.”
The Bureau of Elections, which conducted the investigation into the signatures, disputed that and claimed candidates had knowledge of the potential fraud weeks before the formal announcement. Although the Michigan Democratic Party submitted a challenge to the petitions of Craig, Johnson and candidate Tudor Dixon (who submitted her own separate challenge to Craig’s numbers), the Bureau of Elections says they discovered the alleged fraud on their own while comparing petition signatures to voter signatures on file.
“These circulators here committed fraud,” said Jonathan Brater, the director of Michigan’s elections. “They used the names of people who either weren’t registered, or they were registered and they forged their signatures.”
“This was not a mistake,” he continued. “These circulators knew they were doing this. They did this deliberately.”
At Thursday’s meeting, candidates or their representatives claimed they, in fact, were the victims of fraudulent activity on the part of paid circulators.
The BOE investigation found that in some cases, circulators were engaging in activity referred to as “round-tabling,” where circulators pass petitions amongst each other and forge signatures.
The investigation has now been passed to the Michigan Attorney General’s Office and one Board of Canvassers suggested circulators found to have engaged in fraud should be prosecuted.
In reviewing challenged petitions, the BOE says it looks at a sample size of around 10% of a candidate’s signatures to determine fraud. They look at similar handwriting, compare signatures on paper to the voter’s signature from past ballots, and review the wear and tear of paper petitions to see if they’ve actually been out in the field.
It was discovered that Craig, who was polling as the race’s frontrunner, had more signatures throw out than verified. The Bureau of Elections verified 10,192 of Craig’s signatures and threw out 11,113 including 9,879 allegedly collected by 18 paid circulators who engaged in ‘round tabling.’
The Johnson campaign had 13,800 valid signatures and had 9,393 tossed out including 6,983 signatures allegedly obtained from ‘round tabling’ on the part of many of the same circulators accused of engaging in it for Craig’s campaign.
Brandenburg, Brown and Markey all combined for 42,000 tossed signatures.
32 candidates for state office had petitions called into question over the validity of signatures, and 583 petitions were cleared by the Board of Canvassers.
At issue Thursday was who had the burden of responsibility for verifying potentially fraudulent signatures.
“If the state knows that there is a threat or fraud being committed, they usually offer warnings and/or help alert people that there’s a problem,” said Brandenburg. “They failed to do so and they knew that this was going on.”
“There’s supposed to be the assumption of validity, not the assumption of invalidity,” said Markey. “That’s how it’s always been, and they violated it.”
“You look at your petitions before you turn them into the state,” said Democratic member of the Board of Canvassers Jeannette Bradshaw. “I have said this at numerous meetings. That nominating petition – that initiation of legislation – that is a legal document and it should be handled as such.”
Some campaigns claimed there was no possible way for them to verify voter signatures, as the information they have access to doesn’t include more than the person’s name and address. But Brater said campaigns can get voter signatures from local clerk’s offices and should’ve taken more steps to prevent the phony signatures from making their way onto the petitions.
“The people that are doing these are not qualified document examiners, they’re not handwriting examiners, they’re not trained,” said Jonathan Koch, an attorney for the Johnson Campaign. “They’re generally young kids that are working on campaign staffs. They’re not trained to be handwriting analysts.”
At the close of the meeting, the Board of Canvassers voted 2-2 along party lines for each of the candidates to deem their petition signatures insufficient.
“This is obviously not a place that any of us want to be,” said Brater. “It’s a terrible thing for our state and it’s an attack on our election system.”
