LANSING, Mich. — Petition circulators who allegedly forged signatures, leading to five Republican candidates for Michigan governor potentially losing their spots on the primary ballot, should be criminally prosecuted, key political figures from both sides of the aisle said Tuesday.
"We have to be serious about putting several people in jail," said Norm Shinkle, one of two Republicans who serve on the Board of State Canvassers. "We have to prosecute."
His comments came a day after the Michigan Bureau of Elections reported finding "a substantial volume of fraudulent petition sheets" submitted by candidates hoping to run for office in 2022. On Thursday, the Board of State Canvassers will consider the bureau's conclusions.
Shinkle described the level of fraud reported by the bureau as unprecedented.
Meanwhile, Mark Brewer, former chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, said in addition to those who forged petition signatures, any campaign employee who or petition company that knowingly submitted forged petitions should also be prosecuted.
Brewer, an elections lawyer, spearheaded the challenge to former Detroit police Chief James Craig's petition signatures. Craig was one of the five GOP candidates for governor caught up in the reported forgeries who failed to gather the required 15,000 valid signatures because of them, according to the Michigan Bureau of Elections.
"The criminal prosecution is really vital here to send a message," Brewer said.
Brewer added the forged petitions undermined democracy. Michigan laws can be initiated through the petition process, and candidates for governor, U.S. Congress and judgeships have to gather signatures to score spots on the ballot.
In its Monday night report, the Michigan Bureau of Elections found 36 circulators who submitted fraudulent petition sheets "consisting entirely of invalid signatures."
"All petition sheets submitted by these circulators displayed suspicious patterns indicative of fraud, and staff reviewing these signatures against the qualified voter file did not identify any signatures that appeared to be submitted by a registered voter," a staff report from the bureau said. "Taken together, these circulators provided nominating petitions in at least 10 petition drives."
The bureau estimated that the circulators submitted at least 68,000 invalid signatures across the 10 sets of nominating petitions.
"In several instances, the number of invalid signatures submitted by these circulators was the reason a candidate had an insufficient number of valid signatures," the bureau added.
Among the petition drives impacted were five of the 10 Republican candidates running to be Michigan's next governor, including Craig and self-funding businessman Perry Johnson of Bloomfield Hills, who had already paid for millions of dollars of TV advertising to promote his candidacy. Republican Michael Brown, another of the gubernatorial candidates found to have submitted insufficient signatures, withdrew Tuesday morning from the race.
Brown's campaign turned in 20,900 petition signatures. But the Bureau of Elections found only 7,091 of them were facially valid. About 13,800 of them were on "sheets submitted by fraudulent petition circulators."
The Michigan State Police captain needed 15,000 valid signatures to make the ballot.
Brown said he hired a firm called First Choice Contracting to gather a portion of his petition signatures. An official with the firm didn't respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
In its report, the Bureau of Elections said it was "unaware of another election cycle in which this many circulators submitted such a substantial volume of fraudulent petition sheets consisting of invalid signatures, nor an instance in which it affected as many candidate petitions as at present."
The findings shined new light on an industry that often operates in the shadows: petition gatherers who travel from state to state, being paid by political campaigns for each signature they're able to collect. Often, the circulators work as subcontractors through companies that are hired by the candidates' campaigns and they can be used by multiple campaigns in the same period of weeks.
Retired Michigan elections lawyer John Pirich has been warning canvassers and state lawmakers for years of the liberties taken by petition gatherers, but little to no action has been taken to hold them accountable.
Monday’s announcement should be the impetus for change, he said.
The Board of State Canvassers needs to side with staff recommendations in declining certification for those candidates whose signatures were deemed insufficient, Pirich said. And state officials, he said, need to act “decisively and go after either the companies that hired these individuals or the individuals themselves.”
“There is certainly enough legal precedent to both investigate and prosecute these individuals,” Pirich said. “ ... This has got to end.”
Over the last 20 years, there have been isolated examples similar to those detailed in Monday’s report, Pirich said, but never anything of “this magnitude.”
“I don’t’ think I’ve seen something of this scale across multiple campaigns,” Pirich said. But with the increasing cost per signature and little to no accountability for those who have misused the system in the past, it’s not entirely surprising.
“You’re just inviting abuse.”
The Michigan Bureau of Elections staff assembled a list of the names of circulators who signed multiple sheets consisting of invalid signatures. The patterns of actions suggested to staff that the circulators utilized "an outdated mailing list obtained from some source," the report said.
The document listed 30 "fraudulent petition circulators" who submitted petition sheets across at least 10 campaigns. Six others submitted petition sheets for a single campaign.
Staff members have been working with the Michigan Secretary of State's Office of Investigative Services to refer incidents of "apparent fraud to law enforcement for criminal investigation," the report said.
As of Monday, the bureau's report said it didn't have reason to believe that any specific candidates or campaigns were aware of the activities of fraudulent-petition circulators.
The Secretary of State's office had not yet made a request for an investigation to Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office, said Amber McCann, a spokeswoman for Nessel, on Tuesday morning.
Ron Weiser, chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, accused Democrats of "angling behind the scenes to disqualify their opponents in an unprecedented way."
"Unfortunately for them, Michiganders can see right through this act and can count on our party not only fighting for fairness, but to provide voters with a choice this fall," Weiser added.
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is a Democrat. The winner of the Republican primary on Aug. 2 will challenge Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in November.
Lavora Barnes, chairwoman of the Michigan Democratic Party, credited the Bureau of Elections in her own statement Tuesday.
"Thanks to the tireless work and unprecedented, thorough review undertaken by career civil servants, the Bureau of Elections found that the problems of fraud and forgery were endemic across the entire Republican gubernatorial primary field," Barnes said.
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