- Michigan Republican gubernatorial frontrunners John James, Perry Johnson face petition signature challenges
- A super PAC supporting James filed a challenge against Johnson. A Johnson booster filed a challenge against James
- Candidates need at least 15,000 valid signatures to get on the August primary ballot. State officials are reviewing samples
LANSING — Four years after a signature fraud scandal rocked Michigan’s gubernatorial race, Republican frontrunners Perry Johnson and John James are facing dueling challenges to the petition signatures they filed to qualify for the August primary ballot.
A super PAC backing James is asserting Johnson doesn’t have enough valid petition signatures, alleging an “unfortunate repeat” of forgery and fraud that ended Johnson’s 2022 campaign.
The Mission Michigan challenge argues all petition sheets containing suspect signatures should be invalidated entirely, which the super PAC says would leave Johnson about 450 signatures short of the minimum 15,000 required.
A separate challenge to James’ petitions, signed by metro Detroit conservative activist and Johnson booster Glenn Clark, cites 1,385 examples of allegedly fraudulent signatures and asks the Michigan Bureau of Elections to conduct a full review.
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Neither of the challenges is conclusive evidence of invalid signatures, and each filer appears to have political motivations. It will be up to state election officials and the bipartisan Board of State Canvassers to determine whether candidates have enough valid signatures to make the ballot.
Both James and Johnson turned in far more signatures than the 15,000 required. A random sample of each candidate’s signatures will be reviewed by the Bureau of Elections, which will recommend whether canvassers should certify the petitions. The board will next meet May 28.
The complaint against Johnson’s campaign includes 11 affidavits from voters who swear they never signed petitions to put him on the ballot, while the complaint against James cites nine voters who claim the same.
The challenge to James’ signatures “isn’t serious,” campaign manager Jackson Gross said in a statement, alleging it was an attempt by the Johnson campaign to “manufacture distractions.” She noted fraudulent signatures prematurely ended Johnson’s campaign in 2022.
The Johnson campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the allegations. Clark, the signee of the complaint, did not respond to a message from Bridge seeking comment.
Both campaigns had insisted they took extra steps to submit high-quality petitions.
“I’m the quality guru, so I better get quality petitions,” Johnson, who owns a registrar firm, said while dropping off his signatures in late April.
Both campaigns said they used a mix of volunteers and paid circulators to collect signatures.
“We ran a number of validation exercises to make sure that our numbers were strong, and so out of the 30,000, we’re going to qualify well above the 15,000 (needed),” James said at his own signature drop-off.
The allegations
The Mission Michigan complaint, obtained by Bridge Michigan, alleges Johnson’s petitions include a combination of “duplicate signatures, signature errors, obvious forgeries, numerous jurisdictional issues” and the use of circulators previously associated with fraudulent activity.
The pro-James super PAC concluded more than 14,200 of Johnson’s signatures should be considered invalid. “Accordingly, Johnson has failed to meet the requirement of presenting 15,000 valid signatures from Michigan voters and should not be certified for the 2026 gubernatorial ballot,” the challenge claims.
Mission Michigan alleged more than 6,000 signatures should be invalidated due to “circulator fraud,” along with another 4,500 from signers whose listed address does not match their voter registration.
The group claims that at least two petition circulators used by Johnson’s campaign had appeared on Bureau of Elections lists of people who had submitted fraudulent signatures in the past.
The complaint against James’ campaign, meanwhile, alleges “extensive irregularities,” including “signatures from fraudulent circulators, dead people, apparent forgeries, extensive signature errors, duplicate signatures” and “numerous address and jurisdictional issues.”
The complaint did not identify the number of signatures believed to be invalid.
The challenge alleges James’ campaign political director, Tyler Foti, engaged in “circulator fraud” and asserts that at least 600 signatures in a sample provided by the state show evidence of “round tabling fraud,” where petitions are passed between individuals to make the handwriting and signatures appear varied.
The process
Gubernatorial hopefuls were required to submit petition signatures by April 21, and it’s not immediately clear if other candidates face petition signature challenges.
A dark horse Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Kim Thomas, surprised some political observers last month when she submitted signatures to qualify for the August primary just a few weeks after publicly launching her campaign.
Petitions reviewed by Bridge show they were filled out by just a handful of circulators, including many from a single circulator who provided sheets with voter signatures that appeared to be written in similar handwriting.
In a statement, Thomas said her campaign holds itself “to the highest standards of data integrity and transparency” and she has “full confidence in the grassroots work of our volunteers.” She trusts the bureau will recommend she qualify for the primary, Thomas added.
The Michigan Bureau of Elections will not review all signatures submitted by the campaigns. Instead, staff will limit their examination to a random sample of the total, and will base their recommendation to canvassers on that statistically representative subset.
The board “may not consider” challenges to a candidate’s eligibility unless a challenge threatens a candidate’s ability to qualify for the ballot.
In prior elections, verifying petition signatures had often been a sedate formality for most campaigns, though challenges did crop up on occasion.
That changed in 2022, when a massive signature fraud scandal upended the Republican gubernatorial primary and saw five of 10 candidates blocked from the ballot due to forged signatures, including Johnson.
A jury in February convicted two of the three people accused of fraud through a petition firm they owned and operated. Experts say Michigan laws allowing per-signature payments incentivized the crimes.
“If it hadn’t been for COVID, hadn’t been for the high price for petition signatures, we wouldn’t have this problem,” said Mark Grebner, a longtime political consultant and expert on petition signatures. “It trained a whole new generation of fraudsters.”
Johnson was the only candidate blocked from the ballot in 2022 who is running for governor again this year. He briefly ran for president in 2024 but ended his campaign before the Iowa caucuses.
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