Republicans reveal ignorance about petition process
In a previous article I wrote about how Republicans showed their ignorance of how ballots are processed and election results submitted to officials in the wake of the 2020 election. [1]
Alas, another news article in which Republican voters illustrate their amazing ignorance on how petitions are handled.[2]
The comments have the usual snipe about stolen election in 2020, but the real issue is ignorance on the petition process. Several commentors say something like “oh, so NOW Democrats want to match signatures!”
As an aside, the law says poll workers can look to match signatures if there is a question of eligibility when a voter hands their ballot application when showing up to vote. But the reality is that pollworkers are not handwriting experts. Also, a person’s signature can change over age and time as well as when they are ill. So the signature match issue is simply a poor check.
But the issue on the petitions is NOT signature matching. I ran for Congess and turned in forms with 1400 signatures personally to the election bureau.
What they do to verify signatures is first get a general total to ensure there are more than the required number. Then they start randomly going through the sheets to verify voters names and address match a voter in the voter registration database. They are NOT matching signatures! If they begin finding ineligible names (i.e. names on the petitions that are not on the registered voter list) they begin with a more thorough examination which could lead to checking all the names on a petition. This becomes time consuming.
When one Republican candidate whined about how they got this information too late but were told they were good to go in March, he (or she) is misunderstanding the process.
They were told in March they had, in total, enough signatures. But as I explained above, that doesn’t mean they were told they had enough VALID signatures.
When I ran for Congress in 2016 I had Democratic volunteers help collect my 1400 signatures and they were committed to getting me on the ballot, so they did not have a reason or incentive to forge signatures. I would bet good money that these Republican candidates paid people to collect signatures and perhaps even offered incentives for how many were collected. They used people who were not driven by a desire to get their candidate on the ballot- it was simply an income. Republicans think you can just throw money at something and it will work- something they routinely accuse Democrats of. If any of these candidates is allowed on the ballot it will make the petition-signature law a sham. If they can’t run a petition campaign, they sure as hell won’t be able to run the state as governor.
One whiner on the comments thread said: “They would have overlooked it if they were democrat candidates.” Not remotely true. Again, displaying amazing ignorance of the process and the people that manage our elections. In the 2018 congressional race for Michigan’s 2nd district, both a Democratic candidate and a Republican candidate were prevented from running due to false names on their petitions.
LINKS:
