"Organizers of a Republican-backed Michigan petition to enact voter restrictions to combat would-be voter fraud missed the state's filing
deadline on Wednesday after discovering tens of thousands of fraudulent signatures.

Michigan Republicans are backing the citizen initiative petition known
as Secure MI Vote​​​​, which would impose strict voter ID requirements, restrict absentee voting and ban private donations that help keep
polling places open. The petition drive was launched after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, vetoed a slew of voting restrictions passed by the Republican-led legislature. Though the petition is ostensibly a citizen initiative, voters are not expected to see the measure appear on the
ballot. Republicans have openly plotted all along to exploit a bizarre provision in the state constitution that allows the legislature to adopt
a citizen initiative and pass it with a simple majority that the
governor cannot veto.

This latest fake-signature scandal comes only days after the two leading Republican candidates for governor were booted off the ballot.

Organizers had planned to submit the petition to the state by
Wednesday's deadline but abruptly backed down after discovering that
around 20,000 signatures were fraudulent. Organizer Jamie Roe insisted
that the effort had gathered 435,000 signatures, more than the 340,047 required, but said the group did not submit the petition out of an
"abundance of caution."

"The fact of the matter is our volunteers, our supporters had put in too
much hard work for us to end up getting bounced off the ballot due to
some technicality," he told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday.

The announcement came just days after the state's Bureau of Elections
and Board of Canvassers disqualified five of the 10 Republicans running
for governor, including frontrunners James Craig and Perry Johnson,
after discovering that thousands of the signatures on the petitions they circulated to qualify for the ballot were fraudulent. The Bureau of
Elections identified 36 petition circulators who submitted at least
68,000 fraudulent signatures in the gubernatorial primary, as well as in
nine other nominating contests. Craig and Johnson argued they were
victims of the fraud, not its perpetrators, but a court upheld both of
their disqualifications this week."
[snip]

Yeah, fraudulent signatures is just a "technicality", if you're a retrumplican.

TB

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