Why these petitions fail: the Gascon recall and the Michigan Republican primary
You may recall that in the Michigan governorship primary, five of the GOP primary contenders – including the frontrunners – were disqualified because of faulty petition signatures. I wrote a previous post about it in June, and I had planned a Part II but never got around to it. However, Part II was going to be about the fact that petition-gathering is a paid business subject to fraud, and that’s apparently what happened in Michigan. Whether that fraud was and is in part politically motivated, or simply motivated by financial greed and the lure of cutting corners, I don’t know. But there’s plenty of motivation to go around.
The Michigan fiasco involved firms hired by the candidates to do the signature-gathering, which is a normal practice. The gatherers are paid per signature, which is also normal. Turns out some of these people working for these unspecified firms were crooks, and gathered quite a few fraudulent signatures.
There never was any allegation that the GOP candidates who had the fraudulent signatures knew about it, much less ordered it. But they are considered responsible anyway, even though everyone knows they’re not going to personally verify the signatures. Who in the campaign was in charge of doing that intermediate work and checking the names against the voter rolls? Whoever it was, that person or people slipped up.
Much much more here. One of the disqualified candidates, Markey, had this to say:
Markey also noted that his campaign started collecting signatures early, paid $7 per signature while others paid $20, and determined independently that his signature validity rates were high before submitting the petitions to the state.
“You associated me with fraud. That’s a really, really big accusation,” Markey told the canvassing board and state Elections Director Jonathan Brater.
“This is why normal people do not run. Because I did everything I was supposed to do, I added extra quality controls and then you just assumed that I was like the rest,” Markey said.
Digging deeper, here’s an article on who or what might be behind this:
Shawn Wilmoth is one of several people now at the epicenter of an alleged fraudulent petition scheme that has disrupted the Republican campaign for governor…
“They (the records) say he was wanted for extradition by Arlington, VA for election fraud,” said Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido.
In Arlington County, Virginia, records show Wilmoth later pleaded guilty to election fraud and served 5 years probation…
…[O]ther campaigns impacted hired Wilmoth, too…
While some states require circulators be from that state, Michigan only requires they are U.S. citizens.
Two experts from the University of Michigan says the responsibility for preventing problems like this falls on campaigns, but Michigan’s system does not allow much time for corrections.
Again, you can find much much more information at the link. And there’s more here as well as here and here.
Which brings us to the Gascon recall petition, where essentially the same thing happened, only a little worse because it seems as though there was some condonation of the fraud by some of those wanting to recall Gascon. The players are not the same, although there’s this curious bit (it’s a long essay, and again I suggest you read or at least skim the whole thing):
However, screenshots from a private Facebook group administered by Mark Jacoby, owner of LTVD [which is one of the signature-gathering firms], show that he actively encouraged gatherers to leave California for Michigan, saying, “Michigan is where it’s at,” and, “It’s up to you to prove that when we get paid correctly and we’re able to make a fair living wage to support us and our families, we can get anything done!!! Then if a campaign is not willing to do that, they won’t get on the ballot!”
There are problems inherent in the entire signature-gathering-for-hire business, many of them described here, for example:
Banning paid signature gatherers was an idea that came about early in the initiative’s history, and was seen as a way to stop wealthy individuals or groups from buying their way onto the ballot. Ohio, South Dakota and Washington passed bans on paid signature gatherers in 1913 and 1914. Oregon passed a ban in 1935, Colorado in 1941, and Idaho and Nebraska in 1988. Until the 1980s, courts upheld bans on paid signature gatherers. That changed in 1988, when the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated Colorado’s ban in the Meyer vs. Grant, 486 U.S. 414 (1988) decision.
Several states have tried to ban payment per signature, but do permit payment on a salary or hourly basis. These restrictions have met with mixed review in the federal courts. Presently, seven states have such bans (Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Oregon) and five states have had them held unconstitutional (Idaho, Maine, Mississippi, Ohio and Washington). Most recently, Colorado’s restriction was temporarily enjoined on June 11, 2010, awaiting the outcome of a trial.
Today, the vast majority of petition campaigns use paid circulators, who are paid between $1 and $3 per signature [that’s from around 2012, so the numbers are different today]. Very few campaigns attempt to qualify an initiative petition with volunteer circulators, and even fewer do so successfully. Paid drives, on the other hand, are much more successful. A campaign that has adequate funds to pay circulators has a nearly 100 percent chance of qualifying for the ballot in many states.
The increase in reliance on paid circulators has increased the cost of qualifying an initiative. In California, it now costs more than $1 million…
…The U.S. Supreme Court’s opinions on petition circulators have made the prevention of fraud in the signature gathering process very difficult for states. Since the 1988 Meyer vs. Grant decision invalidated state bans on paid signature gatherers, it has become more difficult to regulate the signature gathering process.
This is an important and apparently fairly widespread problem of which I was previously unaware.
What the hell kind of system requires a citizen to get signatures just to get on the ballot?
I can understand the recall situation but just to have your name on a primary ballot I don’t get.
Here in WA state there are often 10-15 names on the primary ballot for the major state offices and I believe you have to pay some amount to get your name on the ballot so it’s not like everybody does it.
Is this an attempt by the big guys to not have the ballot cluttered with a bunch of no chancers?
Or if you do need signatures to get on the ballot it should be such a low amount that it can easily done by supporters and not even need paid signature gatherers.
Griffin:
The idea is that they only want bona fide candidates with significant support on the ballot. Otherwise the fear is that there would be hundreds of names.
This is just a tiny, tiny preview of the shenanigans that will occur in the next presidential election.
The demonkrats know the crap they pulled off in the last election (deny it as they must) is now common knowledge to anybody who chooses to examine what actually occurred.
For the upcoming election the dems will have to employ new dirty tricks – and they will – because their opposition is on to them.
Not to say the dems will not be successful in cheating; they may be and most definitely will if , once again, the dumbpublicans fold up like a cheap suit.
neo,
Right, and that is why you require a filing fee. Here are the requirements for WA state. Fee is 10% of the salary of the intended office which will give pause to a lot of nutters.
https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_requirements_for_political_candidates_in_Washington
Griffin,
I looked over your link and at first glance that seems a reasonable system for candidacy in a primary.
Thanks for the information Neo- I live in Michigan and have been wondering how something like this could have happened.
As an aside, I think that Tudor Dixon, who ended up winning the Republican nomination for governor after this fiasco, will end up being a surprisingly strong candidate.
I confess that the moment I read about stuff like this I assume that Democrats are playing dirty tricks. Given my personal knowledge of the long history of D dirty tricks and the history we’ve all read, that’s my default assumption. Is that unfair? Maybe. But repeat liars and cheaters don’t get the benefit of the doubt.
I have no idea how we fix this. Educating voters on the history is perhaps the only way, but the current partisan slant of the news media and the willingness of Big Tech to censor and promote dishonest propaganda makes that unlikely.
Perhaps a GOP president will have the guts to speak out. To speak directly to the people with the evidence. Or maybe Trump decides to spend his retirement years (whenever they start) to correct the record and get out the truth.
One general observation. Our election system is broken. We need to clean up voter rolls. We need to eliminate any machines which have any potential at all of being abused. We need voter ID. (speaking of dirty, check out the latest garbage by an outrageously partisan D supreme court). We need to impose drastic penalties on any party that kicks out observers of the other party. Life sentences for any person (including officers) involved.
On that note — voted in our primary here in Tenn earlier this month. The old computers are gone. Paper ballots that we filled in like SATs. Read by a scanner when we inserted the ballots. Ballots retained for possible recount. Trust matters.
this is why they put in motor voter, at the behest of frances piven, they found fewer signatures in los angeles, then san francisco, ok sure,
in Michigan whey they extorted the members of wayne county election department, until they would sign off on the Steal, yes they are the legitimate authority sarc,
The other big Dem push is for “Ranked Voting”, like CA has. It is a sham, and will lead to incumbents almost always winning, with few exceptions. I see that Murkowski was trying to get that in Alaska on the sly. Wonder why, NOT.
SHIREHOME,
Alaska does have ‘ranked choice’ and Murkowski will probably win because of it.
It certainly does reek of an ‘action in the enemy camp’ when you get down to cases. What better strategy than to get paid to collect signatures, and get paid again to make sure a sufficient amount are kicked out?
In this database age, it’s amazing to me that such street-based services could still survive when young kids with laptops can accomplish so much more. There’s a business model, there. “Recalls, Inc.: Our signatures are gold”
@ Aggie > “What better strategy than to get paid to collect signatures, and get paid again to make sure a sufficient amount are kicked out?”
I may have missed this in some of the links, but why don’t campaigns (1) refuse to pay for any signatures that are invalidated; and (2) have their own people do the validation before the petitions are submitted?
Failing to make the ballot happened to Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan in 2012. There’s a brief summary on wiki. If memory serves it was an inside job to keep him off the ballot.
Every race Barak Obama won before the presidency involved getting his opponent disqualified from the ballot. For senate, it involved getting sealed details of Republican Jack Ryan’s divorce into the press. Sealed court records leaked in Cook County? Imagine that!
When you have tons of money, and the Democrats do, it’s easy to conceive of slipping a couple of operatives into the signature operation. Such a person can screw up a petition drive several ways.
Sensible (not Guiliani) people in the Trump election fraud legal team were convinced they had discovered and outed one Democrat mole, but thought there might be others. Mind you, Rudy (and to a lesser extent Lin Wood and Sidney Powell) did enough damage on their own.
That’s all before the Soros secretaries of state get their hands on the petitions.
Alaska does have ‘ranked choice’ and Murkowski will probably win because of it.
No, she will win because she’s for what the Alaska electorate is willing to settle.
Every race Barak Obama won before the presidency involved getting his opponent disqualified from the ballot.
No, he did that once. His opponent was a veteran pol. If her staff bollixed her petitions, it’s a reasonable wager it was because of time constraints derived from her inability to make up her mind or because her staff made a habit of filing wrecked petitions and someone finally called her on it.
The real shizz from Barack Obama’s past is the collusion between moles in the court system or the county clerk’s office on the one hand and the Chicago media on the other. The degree to which Obama himself was complicit in all that (and it was above and beyond any forgivable political tactic) is still murky. Elements in the Chicago media know who the source was and can trace any connection between that person and Obama. The one party who does not know is the Illinois public. A lot of garbage people in the media.
However, Part II was going to be about the fact that petition-gathering is a paid business subject to fraud,
In many states, yes. Where and when I’ve carried petitions, that statement would require a great deal of qualification.
Art Deco:
Only once were all his opponents – in the Democrat primary, which was all that mattered in that district – disqualified because of invalid signatures, and that was that first time. But after, his opponents in subsequent races (primary and then general for the Senate) were thrown out of the race by unsealing divorce records and stirring up scandals (I wrote about the Hull and Ryan situations in this post in 2008). “Disqualified” in the legal sense only applied to that first race, but the others were disqualified in the public eye and were forced by the revelations to bow out, so he did not face them in the primary or the general election. The only original opponent he faced prior to his presidential run was Bobby Rush, who beat him.
@AesopFan – August 21, 2022 at 1:47 am: It doesn’t matter whether they get paid by the original customer or not – the time has come and gone, the opportunity has been liquidated, and the highest bid won yet once again, by trickery. Whatever the cost, the Democrats are well funded and can afford more than a miserable local recall effort.
The Democrats understand very well where and when they need to guarantee the win. Future recall efforts need to get smarter about verification of signatures before the recall is submitted, and it will be time critical.
Yes they steal the country like pirates and mine the waters around them ‘fortify’ is the term of use
If Ca means California, only some cities use ranked voting.
We do have:
– Jungle Primaries
– mail in balloting
– drop boxes allowed
– no Id required voting
– dirty voter rolls
– basically automatic voter registration at the dmv, with no proof of citizenship
– term limits that empower lobbyists
– initiatives largely controlled by special interests
– public sector unions that heavily back Democrats
– huge amount of Soros funded DA’s
– Public reporting of any political donation over I think $100. Great for doxing those wrong thinkers!
I probably missed a few…
In my county, the two ways to get on the ballot are to pay a fee or to collect signatures on a petition. The fee’s not that much, but it seems a waste of campaign funds, and the petition process is a good way for a candidate to get out there and build support. Of course the number of signatures is small enough that a single candidate can easily get it done. Ditto for signatures on a petition for a referendum on a bond proposal.
In much larger counties like L.A., or in state races, I suppose a campaign can either use the petition as an opportunity to build a campaign organization or can hire an expert. After the experiences in Michigan and L.A., I’d think twice about what expert to hire. Were these two incompetent, or double agents? I’d NEVER have submitted a petition without checking every entry against the voting records, and confirming that there were no duplicates. What the heck kind of petition professional fails to carry out that simple procedure?
I think Griffin has it right. Lower thresholds should make pay for signature and the attendant fraud less attractive.