The ruling got here as the state confronted a Friday deadline for finishing ballots for the Aug. 2 major, which state election officers have mentioned is essential for programming computer systems and getting ready absentee ballots.
In its assessment final week of the nominating petitions, the Michigan Bureau of Elections issued a stinging criticism of the strategies utilized by the candidates’ campaigns to gather signatures and the operatives working for the candidates.
“The bureau is unaware of one other election cycle by which this many circulators submitted such a considerable quantity of fraudulent petition sheets consisting of invalid signatures,” the bureau mentioned. It additionally clarified that it noticed no proof that the candidates had any information of the fraud.
Election officers mentioned they’d recognized 36 individuals who had submitted fraudulent petition sheets consisting solely of invalid signatures. On May 23, 19 candidates discovered that they’d not met the signature requirement to get onto the poll, together with three Republicans and one Democrat in search of House seats, and 10 nonpartisan candidates in search of judicial posts.
More than half of the 21,305 signatures submitted by Mr. Craig’s marketing campaign have been rejected, leaving him with 10,192 legitimate signatures, the bureau mentioned in its report, which famous that little effort had been made to range handwriting.
“In some instances, reasonably than making an attempt various signatures, the circulator would deliberately scrawl illegibly,” the bureau mentioned of the petitions for Mr. Craig. “In different situations, they circulated petition sheets amongst themselves, every filling out a line.”
The elections bureau rejected 9,393 of the 23,193 signatures submitted by Mr. Johnson’s marketing campaign, leaving him with 13,800 legitimate signatures. Some of the fraudulent signatures represented voters who had died or moved out of the state, the bureau mentioned.
