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Five of the 10 Republican candidates for the Michigan presidential nomination are not eligible to appear on the ballot due to invalid signatures on their nomination petitions, the Michigan Electoral Office said Monday in a report, which altered the race just over two months before the August primaries.
Those the election office said were ineligible include former Detroit police chief James Craig and businessman Perry Johnson, who have been considered the top candidates for the GOP nomination for governor of Michigan. Others were Donna Brandenburg, Michael Brown and Michael Markey.
The Michigan State Board of Canvasers, made up of two Democrats and two Republicans, will meet Thursday morning to discuss the election office report and decide whether candidates can run in the May 2 primary vote. August.
State investigators identified 36 people who circulated petitions “who filed fraudulent petition forms that consisted entirely of invalid signatures,” according to a report from the polling station released Monday night.
“In total, the Bureau estimates that these circulators filed at least 68,000 invalid signatures filed through 10 sets of nomination petitions,” the report states. “In several cases, the number of invalid signatures submitted by these circulators was the reason why one candidate had an insufficient number of valid signatures.”
Candidates for governor had to collect at least 15,000 valid signatures to appear on the ballot. According to the election office, Craig’s campaign featured 11,113 invalid signatures and only 10,192 “valid facial” signatures, while Johnson’s campaign featured 9,393 invalid signatures and 13,800 invalid signatures, both below the threshold. required.
The office’s investigation also found that the Brandenburg campaign featured 11,144 invalid signatures and 6,634 valid facial signatures; Brown’s campaign featured 13,809 invalid signatures and 7,091 invalid signatures; and the Markey campaign featured 17,374 invalid signatures and 4,430 valid facial signatures.
The election bureau noted that this level of fraud, both in terms of the number of invalid signatures submitted and the number of campaigns affected, was unprecedented. Some of the fraudulent petition sheets usually show “no evidence of normal wear and tear” or evidence of having been “roundtable,” a practice in which each person in a group takes turns signing a line of a petition to try to make the signatures look authentic, the office said.
The report comes as former President Donald Trump relentlessly perpetuates the denied and baseless claim that widespread election fraud cost him re-election in 2020.
Johnson said he shares Trump’s “concern for electoral security” and attended a fundraiser with the former president for a fellow Republican in Mar-a-Lago in March. Craig has tried to distance himself more from Trump’s allegations of voter fraud, but has said he would support a “thorough audit” of the 2020 election results and would accept Trump’s endorsement if offered.
The polling station said it had no reason to believe that specific candidates or campaigns knew that their petitions were circulating fraudulently, but made recommendations to disqualify five of them based on whether a candidate reached the threshold. 15,000 signatures after withdrawing invalid signatures from your requests.
Mark Brewer, a former Michigan Democratic Party chairman who filed a lawsuit challenging Craig’s nomination petition last month, told Bridge Michigan, “Evidence continues to pile up from a massive counterfeiting plan.”
In a statement Monday, Johnson called for reforms to the nomination process, saying it was “fatally flawed.”
“Criminals can commit money fraud or intentionally infiltrate a campaign victimized by illegitimate signatures in a Machiavellian attempt by the opposing party to withdraw them later from the vote,” Johnson said. “Unfortunately, the signatures provided for the campaigns cannot be verified at present until after their presentation to the Secretary of State. That should change immediately. “
John Yob, Johnson’s consultant, said in a series of tweets that the campaign would take the case to court if necessary and become one of the victims of counterfeiters.
“The staff of the Democratic Secretariat of [State] “He has no right to unilaterally cancel all signatures obtained by alleged counterfeiters who were the victims of five campaigns,” said Yob. this fight before the Board and, if necessary, in the courts “.
Brown, a veteran of the Marine Corps and commander of the Southwest District of Michigan State Police, announced Tuesday that he was retiring immediately from the governor’s career.
“It appears that once my campaign’s signature collection was completed, people hired independently for part of our signature collection and validation jumped to other campaigns and took money,” Brown said in a statement. . “They were involved in allegedly fraudulent signature collection activities with these campaigns that led the Michigan Electoral Office to declare all signatures related to these people as invalid. I cannot and will not be associated with this activity.”
The Republican candidate will face Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), who is seeking another term.