GOP to Board of Canvassers on petition fraud scandal: Evaluate each signature one-by-one

LANSING — The Michigan Republican Party will argue Thursday that the Bureau of Elections should compare each allegedly fraudulent signature on gubernatorial candidates' nominating petitions to those the state has on file, and not make wholesale rejections of all signatures collected by circulators suspected of fraud, according to a legal memo obtained by the Free Press.

The Wednesday memo, from party General Counsel John Inhulsen to Chairman Ron Weiser, sets out the main argument the party will make to the Board of State Canvassers, in an effort to keep five Republican candidates for governor from being disqualified from the Aug. 2 primary ballot.

Michigan Republican Party Chairman Ron Weiser
Michigan Republican Party Chairman Ron Weiser

"The Bureau violated both the Michigan Election Law and the Secretary of State’s guidance by failing to compare each and every one of the allegedly invalid signatures with the QVF (Qualified Voter File)," Inhulsen said in the memo.

That is because signatures on petitions must be "presumed valid" unless there is "clear, convincing and competent evidence" to the contrary, the memo said.

Earlier, Republicans castigated Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, for instructing clerks to give a presumption of validity to signatures on absentee ballots.

More: James Craig wants AG Dana Nessel to investigate fraudulent signatures on GOP petitions

More: Fraudulent petition signatures turn Michigan's GOP race for governor on its head

But Inhulsen said Benson's past approach to absentee ballots, which in 2020 were predominantly filed by Michigan Democrats, demonstrates a double standard that is also at work in the handling of the nominating petitions.

"Now that the Secretary of State and her staff are evaluating signatures from voters who support Republican candidates, it appears they are not faithfully applying the same lenient standard across party lines," Inhulsen wrote.

In reports released Monday, the Bureau of Elections determined that at least 36 petition circulators submitted at least 68,000 fraudulent signatures across at least 10 nominating petitions — not all of them petitions for governor and not all of them submitted by Republicans. Those whose petitions were deemed insufficient due to fraudulent signatures included a Democratic congressional candidate and nine judicial candidates, who appear on the nonpartisan section of the ballot.

The bureau found signatures written in identical handwriting and many other indicators of fraud, including a "robin process" in which circulators pass around petitions for multiple candidates and take turn signing to make the petitions look genuine. Officials also found many dead voters and others who no longer lived at the addresses where they were listed.

Bureau staff determined that five of the 10 Republican candidates for governor had fewer than the 15,000 valid signatures required when signatures collected by petition circulators involved in fraud were disqualified. Those candidates are: former Detroit Police Chief James Craig, Oakland County businessman and "quality guru" Perry Johnson, Byron Center businesswoman Donna Brandenburg, Grand Haven financial adviser Michael Markey and Michigan State Police Capt. Mike Brown of Stevensville, who already announced Tuesday he is ending his campaign.

Lansing attorney John Pirich, an election law expert who has acted for both Republican and Democratic candidates and campaigns, said it is true that there is a presumption of innocence with respect to petition signatures, but that presumption is lost when there is obvious fraud.

In this case, "you don't have to be a handwriting expert to look at many, many of these signatures to see that they're almost virtually identical," Pirich said.

Once that pattern is set out, which bureau staff did "in remarkable detail," there is precedent and every reason to disqualify all signatures collected by circulators who have been shown to have committed fraud, he said.

Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @paulegan4Read more on Michigan politics and sign up for our elections newsletter

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: In petition fraud scandal, GOP says each signature must be evaluated