(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) The top two Republican candidates for Michigan governor mysteriously had thousands of signatures rejected, meaning that they may be considered ineligible for the ballot.
Candidates for governor must gather 15,000 signatures from supporters in order to secure eligibility for the ballot. If they fall short of that number, they are considered to be ineligible, the Detroit News reported.
The Michigan Bureau of Elections earlier this week released its findings regarding the eligibility of the members of the Michigan Republican primary field. They denied the petitions of the Republicans’ wealthiest candidate, Perry Johnson, and the most popular candidate, James Craig.
According to the bureau report, they have never seen an election cycle with so much fraud.
It said that 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.”
They estimated that a small group of people wrote in “at least 68,000 invalid signatures submitted across 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.”
Working for the Craig campaign, lawyer Edward Greim said two weeks ago that he believed that Craig would remain on the ballot, and that the challenges would be insufficient in the end.
Greim seems to believe that the circulators were operatives attempting to undermine the campaigns of the top candidates.
“Despite the potential efforts of a group of circulators to defraud the campaign, it is our belief that the petition remains valid,” Greim wrote.
“That is because most of the technical challenges fail, and a signature comparison will likely show that the circulators did not write in a sufficient number of false signatures to erase the comfortable cushion of supporters amassed by the campaign.”
Of course, current Michigan Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who has been tied to shady deals in the past, may have something to do with the Bureau’s “findings.”
