The Michigan Board of State Canvassers has disqualified five Republican candidates for governor because of invalid signatures, including presumed front-runners former Detroit police chief James Craig and wealthy businessman Perry Johnson.
The vote to disqualify was tied 2-2 along party lines, but because there was no affirmative majority vote, the candidate’s names will not be on the ballot.
Investigators for the board found 36 petition circulators for 10 different candidates in several races committed intentional forgery, signing random names on the petition sheets. The 36 circulators submitted 68,000 fraudulent signatures.
The matter is going to court but time is growing very short. There is a June 3 deadline for the ballots to be finalized for the Aug. 2 primary.
The debate came down to an interpretation of a state law, MCL 168.544c, because how the Michigan Bureau of Elections officials handled the petitions.
While they reviewed every single signature, they only double checked 7,000 of the 68,000 signatures by comparing them to peoples’ actual signatures on file in Michigan’s Qualified Voter File. None were correct.
But the candidates argue the state needs to review all 68,000 signatures – and not throw away signatures just because they came from a fraudulent circulator – as MCL 168.544c states.
“The invalidity of 1 or more signatures on a petition does not affect the validity of the remainder of the signatures on the petition,” the law states.
Donna Brandenburg, a prominent businesswoman, called the state’s process a “shame” and “an assault against the American people on every single level.”
“I find this process to be an arbitrary goat rodeo,” she said
The disqualified candidates have a case to be made, but the question remains: will the court allow them the time to get valid signatures to appear on the ballot. The candidates were at least 3800 signatures short of qualifying, meaning they would have to hustle to comply with the law.
One candidate was rightly angry that his reputation had been besmirched by the board. Michael Markey, Jr. thought the board had been far too cavalier in making the decision to accuse the five candidates of fraud.
Markey said he shouldn’t be associated with the other candidates, since he used a different company to collect his signatures. The Grand Haven financial adviser said these are serious allegations against him, and the process shouldn’t be left to assuming some signatures are invalid.
“You associated me with fraud. That’s a really, really big accusation that I think you guys took lightly,” Markey said. “That’s huge on my career. This is why normal people do not run.”
One might blame the candidates themselves for not properly vetting the company that gathered the signatures. But it’s unreasonable to suggest they should have checked all the signatures that were turned in.
Hopefully, the courts will see that and either delay the June 3 due date or force the Board of Canvassers to examine each and every signature for its validity.
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