Five Republican would-be candidates were disqualified Thursday from the GOP Primary ballot for the Michigan Gubernatorial election because none of their nominating petitions has sufficient valid signatures. The grand irony here is that all five subscribe to the Big Trump Lie when there’s overwhelming evidence – real, substantive evidence that will actually hold up in court – that it’s Republicans who are the cheats.
The five candidates are:
Donna Brandenburg, who describes herself as a businesswoman and was endorsed by Mike Flynn
Michael Jay Markey Jr, a financial consultant and radio show host
Mike Brown, State Police Captain, former County Commissioner and USMC veteran, who was endorsed by Ted Nugent
and the two considered the leaders in the nomination race:
Perry Johnson, who styles himself as a “quality guru” but is far from the “perfection” he fancies he has
and
James Craig, Detroit Police Chief (retired) & ex-Cincinnati Police Chief who was described by Trump as “terrific” and is pictured here with Bill Barr – no word as to whether Barr or Trump endorsed him
According to the state’s Bureau of Elections, all five are ineligible because the number of valid signatures submitted on their nominating petitions was far short of the 15,000 required to qualify for a position on the primary ticket.
We’re not talking a few signatures here and there to pad out the petitions, we’re talking thousands of forged signatures. According to the Bureau’s report, state investigators identified 36 petition circulators “who submitted fraudulent petition sheets that consisted entirely of invalid signatures.” In all, the Bureau identified a total of 68,000 invalid petition signatures across all ten candidate submissions, over 62,000 of which came from just these five candidates.
But what singled out these five candidates is the fact that, after the forgeries were removed from their totals, they had too few valid signatures to qualify. The Johnson campaign submitted around 9,300 forgeries and only 13,800 facially valid signatures. Craig’s campaign submitted 11,113 forgeries and only 10,192 facially valid ones.
The other three candidates had far more invalid signatures than valid ones.
Brandenburg: 11,144 forgeries and 6,600 valid ones
Brown: 13,809 forgeries and about 7,000 valid ones
Markey: 17,374 forgeries and only 4,400 valid ones
And they didn’t even try hard to cover up their fraud as Simon D Schuster shows in this tweet.
Bureau of Elections staff provides a detailed explanation of why signatures were found to be fraudulent in their report, but some of the examples they provide illustrate forgery that is almost painfully obvious. #mipol
Look at this. pic.twitter.com/fRSsc1rjvK
— Simon D. Schuster (@Simon_Schuster) May 24, 2022
All the fraudsters needed to achieve this effect is one of these:
These petition sheets, submitted by James Craig’s campaign, showed evidence of being round-tabled. The Bureau’s report noted, “None remotely resembled the signer’s signature” when compared with those in the qualified voter file.
The report describes this level of fraud as unprecedented. From The Washington Post:
Some of the fraudulent petition sheets tended to show “no evidence of normal wear,” or showed evidence of having been “round-tabled,” a practice in which each person in a group takes turns signing one line of a petition in an attempt to make the signatures appear authentic, the bureau said.
To no one’s surprise, all five candidates immediately resorted to the I’m-the-victim GOP default position. Craig went so far as to posit a conspiracy theory. “I do believe this was a well-planned and orchestrated effort to get me off the ballot,” he said. “I’m being robbed of the opportunity to be on the ballot and let Michigan voters decide who should represent the GOP.”
Really? You’re going with that? Did no one check the petitions before submitting them? As Simon D Schuster said, “I’m having a lot of trouble understanding how this wasn’t noticed by any campaign.”
Checking that vital paperwork like their nominating petition is complete, accurate and valid is ultimately the responsibility of the candidate. Even if they were not complicit in the production of the forgeries, they cannot excuse the utter negligence of failing to check the sheets before submission.
Chairman Norm Shinkle, one of the two Republicans on the Board, told The Detroit News:
We have to be serious about putting several people in jail.
Yes, they must. Forgery is a felony in all 50 states and this is as clear a case of forgery as there could be. But it remains to be seen who will actually be charged.
The decision to disqualify all five was made in a deadlocked 2-2 decision split along party lines, which disqualifies the candidates by default, according to State Elections Director Jonathan Baker.
