Michigan eyes tougher petition drive rules after signature fraud scandals

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Democrats in the Michigan Legislature are attempting to pass a slew of bills to revamp the regulations around how signatures are gathered and verified on petitions to get statewide candidates and issues on the ballot.

The legislation aims to avert the type of fiasco seen in 2022, when five Republican gubernatorial candidates and several judicial candidates were kept off the ballot because of thousands of fraudulent signatures on their nominating petitions. The bills would disincentivize paid signature gatherers — called circulators — from collecting fake signatures or those obtained by lying about the issue on the petition.

Michigan has relatively few restrictions on those who collect signatures, a necessary task for candidates to get on the ballot and a hallmark of any public space during an election year. If enacted, the legislation could reshape how signature collection takes place by changing how circulators are paid and how those signatures are processed.

The Senate voted along party lines to approve what experts say are largely common sense changes. But with the clock running out on the lame duck legislature and a variety of legislative priorities still looming, it’s not clear how likely these bills are to make it through the House and become law.

Instead of paying circulators per signature, which some say motivated troves of fake signatures uncovered in previous gathering efforts, Senate Bill 1108 would require circulators to be paid an hourly wage or flat rate.

Circulators would also be required to read the summary of the petition to would-be signers, per SB 1109, eliminating the potential to lie about the issue voters are putting their name to. The final bill, SB 1110, would allow anyone who signed a petition more than once to still have one of those signatures counted rather than throwing them all out, as current law requires.

The legislation has won the favor of some of Michigan’s most prominent election officials, including Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.

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“For years we’ve seen candidates and others abuse and manipulate our state’s petition circulation process for financial or political gain. This fraud and abuse in the petition process hurts candidates, parties and voters and is a threat to the integrity of Michigan’s election system,” Benson said in a statement. “These bills remove a financial incentive to generate fraudulent signatures on petitions, will bolster trust in our electoral process and crack down on unethical activity, ensuring a stronger, more transparent system for us all.”

In Michigan, people gathering signatures can be paid for their work, which can prompt groups to hire people from out of state. During the times of the year when petitions are being prepared for the ballot, it’s common to see several people with clipboards at the grocery store, the mall — anywhere they can catch a steady stream of people who might be willing to sign.

The Michigan Supreme Court has held that circulators can’t be required to register with the Secretary of State. Circulators are required to check on a box on the petition confirming they’re paid for the work, but the law does not specify that box be checked before someone signs.

Richard Houskamp, the vice-chair of the Board of State Canvassers, called signature gathering “a healthy part of a robust process.” As one of the people tasked with verifying signatures and adopting language for statewide proposals, Houskamp said it wouldn’t be a bad thing for signature gatherers to be held to a higher standard.

“When it comes to gathering signatures, it’s clear we’re trying to balance the right of the people to petition and sign petition against those who would be bad actors,” he said.

The faulty signatures that kept five Republican candidates for governor off the ballot in 2022 — including conservative front-runners James Craig and Perry Johnson along with several judicial candidates — is perhaps the most glaring example of what officials say has been a problem for years.

“It’s been so systemic that each year, it yields new reporting with increasing severity,” Sen. Jeremy Moss, a Democrat from Southfield and the sponsor of all three bills, said on the Senate floor before the vote Wednesday. He cited examples from several different years. “Our proposals here would protect Michigan voters from malicious attempts to deceive them about public policy and to eliminate those incentives for those who behave badly when circulating petitions.”

Sen. Ruth Johnson, a Republican representing Holly and a former secretary of state, said in her own testimony that she felt SB 1108 would penalize all circulators in order to catch “some bad apples.”

“This is simply un-American,” she said, arguing the bills don’t eliminate the potential for fraud.

The group at the center of the faulty 2022 petitions, First Choice Contracting, appears to have since closed its doors after Attorney General Dana Nessel charged owners Shawn Wilmoth and Willie Reed, alongside Jamie Wilmoth-Goodwin, with felonies including conducting a criminal enterprise and several counts of election law forgery. In total, at least 68,000 signatures across 10 nominating petitions were found to be fraudulent.

It’s possible a number of those candidates wouldn’t have made the ballot anyway, said Steve Liedel, a partner at Detroit law firm Dykema, but signature gathering has been a problem for issues and candidates alike for years now. Liedel has worked on past ballot issues including Reproductive Freedom for All in 2022.

“It’s my personal view that there are better methods here,” he said. “The state should take the step that has been taken in other states to allow signatures to be submitted or affixed to petitions using electronic signatures.”

In Arizona, for instance, residents can use a program called “Equal” (often stylized as “E-qual”) to sign their name to candidate petitions from home or anywhere with internet access. For petitions on ballot issues, Arizonans still need to sign in person.

The bills proposed would likely have “marginal impact at best in delivering intended results,” Liedel said. He suggested a bigger potential fix could be shifting the requirement that signatures be delivered all at once to weekly or even monthly over the 180 days circulators can collect signatures.

“These are hard things to regulate,” he said. “If folks think this is going to fix the issue, I think they’re likely to be disappointed in the ultimate results. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do this. They should make some attempts to improve the process, even if there are likely more effective ways for the legislature to do that.”

The problems with fraud in gathering petition signatures are separate from misplaced concerns about fraud in voting, where multiple election procedures are in place to verify the identity and eligibility of voters before allowing them to register and to cast a ballot. Those legally mandated safeguards have been found to limit vote fraud to very rare instances that almost never affect the outcomes.

The Senate is considering an additional package of bills from the House that would change how signatures are processed. In addition to cleaning up election law to better reflect court decisions and other changes, House Bills 5571-5576 would codify the Board of State Canvassers’ ability to use random sampling to review signatures.

Those bills have already passed the House. If approved by the Senate, they will go to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who has not commented publicly on the bills but has shown a willingness to support legislation aimed at reforming elections.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.