20,000 fraudulent signatures ⁠— finally evidence of massive voter fraud in Michigan?

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.

And maybe 68,000 MORE fake signatures:

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.

Source: https://www.salon.com/2022/06/06/michigans-push-to-fight-fake-voter-fraud-gets-upended-by-actual-fraud/

Did I forget to mention that all the fraudulent signatures are on the GOP side? Oops, kinda buried the lede there, didn't I?

ElwoodBlues · M

Seems some of the folks circulating those GOP petitions were using deceptive practices:

State Rep. Amos O'Neal recalled his own run-in with a Secure MI Vote petition circulator at a Saginaw County barbershop.

"All he said was, 'Hey, can you guys sign my petition? It's going to help improve voting.' When I asked him exactly what it was he was petitioning for, he couldn't articulate," O'Neal told MLive.

When O'Neal urged others in the barbershop not to sign, the petition circulator "became irate," he said.

"He said — and these are his exact words — 'You're messing with my money.' I took that as meaning, he's being paid to go around — particularly in Black communities — to get signatures," he told the outlet.

Voters Not Politicians launched a tool allowing voters to report deception or misinformation by Secure MI Vote circulators, and heard many similar complaints.

"We've been collecting stories from people who really have signer's remorse," Wang told Salon. "The accounts we've been getting are sort of consistent: Petition circulators have been saying, for example, 'However you think about voting rights, this is just to put the question to the voters.'"

When one voter pressed circulators on what was in the actual petition, "they refused to say anything else about the petition, about what's in it," one account said, according to Wang.

"It just illustrates the fact that they don't have any policies in there that they can publicly and openly and proudly discuss, even with the people they're trying to get to sign. They're playing this game where they're trying to mislead voters into signing the petition."