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Lansing — Letters sent Thursday to the Michigan Bureau of Elections allege that two of the leading Republican candidates for governor, John James and Perry Johnson, have numerous invalid signatures on the petition sheets needed to secure spots on the August primary ballot.
The challenges come as the state Bureau of Elections combs through candidate signatures to ensure gubernatorial hopefuls have the 15,000 valid signatures required to appear on the Aug. 4 ballot.
State election officials eventually will present their findings to the Michigan Board of State Canvassers, which will make the ultimate call regarding the candidates’ eligibility. The letters sent to the Bureau of Elections ahead of Thursday’s deadline flagged several alleged issues in the signatures, including suspicious handwriting, ineligible signers and duplicate signatures.
The James campaign dismissed the challenge submitted against it and chalked it up as an unserious distraction.
“Perry [Johnson] is once again trying to manufacture distractions,” James campaign manager Jackson Gross said. “He was thrown off the 2022 gubernatorial ballot because of his campaign’s fraud, and now, based on multiple challenges to his current petitions, it looks like the self-proclaimed quality guru is again struggling to make the ballot.”
U.S. Rep John James speaks during a Jan. 26 town hall meeting at the Little Brown Jug restaurant in Maybee. A complaint filed challenging his nominating petitions claims the forms contained invalid dates, a signature from a woman who said she couldn’t remember signing it and a signature from a woman who had been dead for more than three years.
Johnson, who was disqualified in 2022 amid a fraudulent signature scandal that kept five GOP hopefuls off the ballot, said, while submitting his signatures last month, that he went “overboard” in checking the petitions this time around.
The wealthy Bloomfield Hills businessman, who made a fortune in the quality control business for the auto industry, guaranteed he would make the ballot. His campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Thursday.
The complaint against Johnson alleges his signature haul contains a combination of suspicious handwriting patterns, duplicate signatures and signatures from individuals who maintain they never signed.
If those signatures were to be eliminated, Johnson’s signature totals would fall to 14,550, 450 signatures short of the 15,000 needed to qualify for the ballot, according to the complaint filed by Michael Patwell, an attorney representing a pro-James group called Mission Michigan.
Businessman Perry Johnson, a GOP candidate for Michigan governor, dances along to a song that was playing at the end of his speech during on March 28 at the Michigan Republican Party’s endorsement convention in Novi. Johnson, who was booted from the ballot in 2022 in a voter signature fraud scandal, faces a new challenge to his nominating petitions to get on the Aug. 4 ballot.
Patwell argued special scrutiny should be applied to Johnson’s petition in light of Johnson’s disqualification from the ballot in 2022, when the Bureau of Elections found a wave of fraudulent signatures had been submitted by paid gatherers.
“When a candidate has a documented history of submitting fraudulent signatures in a prior petition for the same office — a history confirmed by criminal conviction of people working for the candidate and his disqualification from the ballot—the bureau has every reason to look carefully and there is little excuse for allowing obvious instances of forgery and fraud to permeate throughout Johnson’s 2026 petitions and petition signatures,” Patwell wrote.
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In the complaint challenging James’ signatures, Troy resident Glenn Clark alleged James’ petitions included invalid dates, signatures from individuals who said they didn’t or couldn’t remember signing the petition and a signature from a woman who had been dead for more than three years.
“Dead persons are not eligible to vote in Michigan or capable of signing nominating petitions,” the complaint said.
The complaint also alleged there was a “substantial number” of signatures that were illegible or not registered to vote, and more than 200 sheets from 16 circulators with the same distinct “5” that Clark alleged was a “strong indication of system fraud.” The complaint refers to the issue as involving “Crazy 5’s.”
“This unique mark suggests that the same individual was falsifying the required circulator affidavit for these petition sheets,” the complaint said.
Johnson and James are trying to get on the Aug. 4 ballot, along with former Attorney General Mike Cox, state Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt and longtime Pastor Ralph Rebandt.
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Staff Writer Craig Mauger contributed.
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This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Perry Johnson, John James face nominating petition challenges
