Michigan governor candidates face elimination after alleged signature fraud | The Hill
This is hillarious. Dem election board outlining how cheating is done (even using the correct industry parlance) because it's Republicans (gathering signatures) but it is EXACTLY how it is done by Dems with mail-in ballots as well.
Candidates must submit 15,000 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot.
The Bureau said that the five candidates had filed forms that showed telltale signs of fraud, including forms that featured the same handwriting across multiple signatures and some that did not show signs of wear and tear typical of a used petition.
Both the Michigan Democratic Party and Tudor Dixon (R), a conservative activist also running for governor, had filed complaints challenging the signatures.
In their own review, “staff noticed a large number of petition sheets, submitted by certain circulators, appeared fraudulent and consisted entirely of invalid signatures,” the Bureau said in its report. They said some petitions showed signs of “round-tabling,” a practice in which petition gatherers sign each other’s forms in succession to vary handwriting and make signatures appear authentic.
The Bureau said they did not have reason to believe the campaigns were aware of the fraudulent signatures turned in by paid signature gatherers.
Now the reality is that in urban areas at least, GOP cheats to get
on the ballot and Dems cheat with
mail in ballots and with voter reg. Sometimes Dems cheat
at the ballot as well with a bus of voters going to each pollsite but that is less common.
For ballot signature ops, Dems usually can just stand outside subways or bus stops and stores to gather sigs. Anyone who passes by can sign. Now this captures a lot of worthless sigs because they are not registered, not in the right district, etc but it doesnt matter because lets say the seat requires 5k petitions and they will submit 20k.
As someone who has challenged a lot of petitions, at the board and even in court, the rule is if the Dem doesnt have 3x the amount req, I challenge because I can throw most of them off but usually they have enough that its not worth trying. Republicans, however, the rule typically is about 30-50% above the Req. The reason is that most Republicans have to go door to door using the registration sheets that show where the voters live to get valid signatures. I can look at a sheet in seconds and tell you if it is legit UNLESS they have have a decent round table team.
Basically a good round table team uses the signature books to see what the voter sig looks like and if they do a half decent job, it is really hard to tell on first glance and unless you can get the voter to go to court, you cant throw it off.
Now this EXACT same template is used by operatives to fill out actual ballots and sign the mailer. The odd thing is that many GOP don't seem to mind a bit of fraud to get on the ballot but would not really even consider ballot fraud or cheating on the election itself. Dems on the other hand, rarely cheat in signature drives but cheat with the ballot count not uncommonly.
Mind you, Republicans dont have a real chance of winning many of these type races since the registration is 2:1 or better DEM:GOP. So their morality is probably more a practical thing since nobody would believe a GOP candidate would win in Compton for example.
Also, many of the races that the Dems cheat most fiercely at are primaries since the margins can be close and a single team of 6 or so at a table willing to do the necessary can easily flip the race. Also, often the election board officials (appointed by the local party machines) are willing to kind of look the other way as long as it is intraparty stuff and they kind of protect the status quo of each other's machine, while always looking for an opportunity to turn the knife in the other party or dissidents.
Whitmer must have some serious concern if they are letting operatives actually tell reporters something useful.