Former Detroit police chief and presumptive nominee James Craig was disqualified from Michigan’s Republican gubernatorial primary because of a massive number of fake signatures on his ballot petition.
Craig turned in 21,305 total signatures, over 11,000 of which the state’s Bureau of Elections determined to be fraudulent, putting him below the 15,000-signature threshold necessary for his name to appear on the ballot.
“Staff reviewed each petition sheet submitted by Mr. Craig. During that review, staff flagged each sheet which was signed by a fraudulent-petition circulator,” the bureau’s review of Craig’s petition reads.
On May 23, the same day the rejections were announced, the bureau released a 17-page report detailing the “unprecedented number of fraudulent petition sheets” it received from Craig and other candidates. The report identified 36 total petition circulators, all of whose signatures were fraudulent.
Eighteen of the 36 circulators turned in a total 9,879 signatures on Craig’s behalf. Another 1,234 signatures were received from law-abiding circulators, but the bureau threw them out because they were missing, incomplete, or did not match the voter’s signature on record.
Many of Craig’s petition sheets administered by fraudulent-petition circulators appeared to all have been filled out in the same handwriting. Others, the bureau said, were “roundtabled,” in which a few signers take turns signing a petition sheet to vary handwriting, giving off the impression that the signatures are legitimate.
Four other Republican gubernatorial candidates, Perry Johnson, Michael Markey, Donna Brandenburg, and Michael Brown, also submitted a large number of invalid signatures or petition sheets turned in by fraudulent circulators, failing to meet the necessary threshold, leading to their disqualification as well.
Craig, Johnson, and Markey filed suit in the Michigan Court of Appeals in the days following the release of the bureau’s report, asking the court to overturn the bureau’s decision. All of the efforts failed, leading the candidates to take the case to the state’s Supreme Court.
Many Michiganders believed Craig to be the candidate most likely to win the nomination and challenge Governor Gretchen Whitmer in November’s general elections. In the fall of 2021, Craig led Whitmer in the polls by six points, but his advantage faded months later, when a January poll saw him trailing the incumbent governor by five points.
Assuming Craig’s case has as much success in the Supreme Court as it did in the lower court, the new frontrunner for the Republican nomination wil be Tudor Dixon, who turned in nearly double the number of valid signatures necessary to appear on the ballot.
Two of the people who submitted petition sheets for Dixon were on the list of fraudulent-petition circulators released by the bureau, but they combined for only 77 signatures out of the over 29,000 supporting her appearance on the ballot.
A local woman, Maryanne Illman, filed a challenge that attempted to void all of Dixon’s signatures on the grounds that her petition sheets listed the gubernatorial term she sought as ending in 2026, when the term will actually end at noon on January 1, 2027.
Because of that discrepancy, the petitions are misleading to voters and, therefore, violative of Michigan’s election laws, Illman argued. The board held, however, that because the end date of the gubernatorial term is not required to appear on a petition, Dixon’s signatures were still valid.
Dick DeVos, husband of former president Donald Trump’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, announced his family’s endorsement of Dixon the day after the bureau disqualified Craig. On Thursday, Right to Life of Michigan also endorsed Dixon.
Michigan voters will decide whether Dixon should receive the Republican nomination in the state’s primary election, scheduled August 2.