“The irony of a cop and a quality expert turning in cruddy signatures is rich, to be sure.” – Kyle Melinn
Following Charlie LeDuff’s piece on chief “neophyte” James Craig’s dysfunctional handling of both his initial nominating petitions and his challenge rebuttals, along with his and Perry Johnson’s exploitation of “a few dozen” dead voters, Kyle Melinn was the latest to pen a column on this ongoing scandal that has the potential to knock multiple candidates off the ballot.
As a reminder, Craig, Johnson, and fellow Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon are all implicated in an illegal “round robin” signature forging scheme that AP described as “a small group of people sign[ing] names and addresses in turn, one per sheet, using a voter list.” Attorney Mark Brewer said the submitted petitions included mass and blatant fraudulent activity on an unprecedented scale.
Craig, Johnson, and Dixon all affirmed under penalty of perjury that “the facts contained in the [nominating petitions] set forth” were confirmed by them to be accurate and verifiable.
See excerpts below on those “making a mockery of our sacred electoral system” and read the full report here.
Lansing City Pulse: Fraudulent Petition Signature Gatherers Must Be Prosecuted
By Kyle Melinn
[…] Folks who pass around petitions for money have escaped accountability for years.
They can blatantly lie about what they are advocating for because it’s not a crime. If the Legislature tried to make a crime to lie, they could argue a First Amendment violation and likely win.
What can be prosecuted and should be prosecuted is what we’re seeing with the petition signatures for Republican gubernatorial candidate James Craig and Perry Johnson. In these cases, attorneys Mark Brewer and Steve Liedel have found blatant examples of what is called “round robin” signing.
They have evidence that a “Gang of Eight” paid petition circulators signed the names of random Michigan voters on various petitions so they could earn their per-signature fee and complete whatever goal was set for them. By some reports, the fee is now $20 per signature.
Another candidate, a potential judicial candidate from Southeast Michigan, fell victim to the same scheme from First Choice Contracting. Five names, Nicholas Charlton, Jonell Hampton, Stephen Tinnin, Yazmine Vasser and William Williams, appeared as signature collectors on all three petitions.
The judicial candidate who talked to MIRS opted not to run instead of filing petitions because he questioned the signatures’ legitimacy.
Craig and Johnson — who pushed their signature collection to the deadline — did file. It’s only now, after Brewer blew the whistle, that Craig is claiming to be a victim of the alleged forgeries.
The Bureau of Elections will tell us in a couple of weeks if Craig and Johnson will make the August primary ballot after all of their bad signatures are thrown out. But that shouldn’t be the end of the story.
Regardless of how the Republican field shakes out, these individuals must be prosecuted by authorities. […]
Regardless of how you feel about the former Detroit police chief or the Quality Guru, Michigan voters may not get the option of voting for either during this summer’s primary. If too many fraudulent signatures are found, either one or both will be kicked off the ballot.
Both men paid people for work they didn’t do. Just as if someone sold you a car with no engine or claimed to fix a leaky roof and did not. The circulators scammed them and are scamming all of us. They are making a mockery of our sacred electoral system.
The irony of a cop and a quality expert turning in cruddy signatures is rich, to be sure. Campaigns shouldn’t be putting themselves in a position where they are either too time-strapped or broke to scrub signatures.
Still, a signal needs to be sent to the bands of transient circulators who travel from state to state to do this work that Michigan is serious about its election system. Inserting random names onto a petition is not OK.
