Michigan Democrats urge a probe to disqualify Mike Rogers from the ballot

Michigan Democrats are reiterating their calls for an investigation into Republican Senate candidates’ petition signatures after claiming evidence of fraud and potential forgery that has similarly disqualified several Great Lakes State candidates in the past.

Counsel for the Michigan Democratic Party and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee sent a second letter to the Michigan Board of State Canvassers on Thursday detailing other instances of alleged fraud on behalf of Senate GOP candidate and former Rep. Mike Rogers. The party argues that the number of alleged fraudulent signatures, once removed from the petition, would bring Rogers below the required 15,000 signatures to be on the 2024 ballot.

In the letter sent by the Elias Law Group, a Democratic-aligned election law firm founded by Marc Elias, the organizations claim potential fraud that could affect nearly 16,000 of Rogers’s signatures. It follows an earlier request from the parties last week to investigate Rogers, as well as the petitions of current Senate candidates Sandy Pensler and Justin Amash.

Democrats also want an investigation into former Rep. Peter Meijer despite the fact that he dropped his Senate bid on April 26 and left Rogers as the front-runner for the Republican primary. Rogers is backed by former President Donald Trump and the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee.

​​”Since we submitted our May 17 letter, we have obtained declarations from six voters who affirmed that, although their names, information, and purported signatures appear on petition sheets for Mr. Rogers, they did not fill out or sign those petition sheets,” co-counsel for the parties wrote.

The Democrats contend that a sample of Rogers’s petition sheets shows 23% of people were not registered to vote in Michigan and, therefore, were not qualified to sign, arguing that this could render as many as 6,500 of the nearly 30,000 signatures Rogers submitted invalid. The parties also argue that at least 18 circulators for Rogers, who submitted nearly 12,300 signatures in total for Rogers’s nomination, may have committed fraud, as well.

“The new indications of apparent fraud are deeply concerning and demand immediate action,” Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lavora Barnes said in a Friday statement. “Given that Michigan voters have now submitted declarations stating they did not sign the petitions, the Bureau of Elections and Board of Canvassers must uphold their responsibility to protect the integrity of Michigan’s elections and conduct a full, thorough investigation.”

“The Board of State Canvassers must conclusively determine that the Republican Senate candidates have each submitted 15,000 valid signatures before taking any vote to certify them to appear on the ballot,” Barnes said.

One of the parties’ examples of evidence is a complaint from Mary Alexander, who also confirmed that her brother, DeWayne Washington, could not have signed the same petition sheet that she did because he has been dead since 2022, according to her affidavit.

Another example of evidence is that signatures submitted for the Rogers petition appear differently than they do on the sheet for a different candidate, with the groups alleging inconsistent handwriting, misspellings, and address errors as cause for potential fraud.

The groups also allege that “suspicious patterns” point to fraud, such as Rogers circulator Dennis Rodzik collecting 84 signatures from 10 different counties in Michigan all on one day, Oct. 14, 2023.

“Even assuming that 23% of the individuals who signed these circulators’ pages are among those not registered to vote, that leaves approximately 9,465 signatures implicated by the indications of potential fraud discussed in this letter and our May 17 letter,” the organizations’ counsel wrote. “Combined with the approximately 6,500 signers we anticipate the Board will find to be unregistered, 15,965 signatures on Mr. Rogers’ petition may be implicated.”

The May 17 letter detailed two complaints challenging judicial candidates Lisa Neilson and Matthew Ackerman for alleged fraudulent signatures. According to the complaints, six circulators named in the Neilson complaint and 20 circulators named in the Ackerman complaint also circulated petitions for at least one of the four GOP Senate candidates.

“Given the indications of potential fraud revealed by our initial review, we request that the Board immediately conduct a thorough investigation of the nominating petitions submitted by Mr. Rogers, Mr. Pensler, Mr. Amash, and Mr. Meijer for suspected fraud,” the Democratic organizations’ counsel wrote last week.

Rogers’s campaign blasted the Democrats’ latest letter as a political stunt in a statement to the Detroit News, expressing their belief that the request for an investigation would be dismissed quickly.

“Elissa Slotkin is so terrified to face Mike Rogers in November that she enlisted D.C. liberal elitist lawyer Marc Elias to release this meritless letter three weeks after the challenge deadline in an attempt to subvert democracy, silence Michigan voters, and distract from her failed record on the cost of gas, groceries and securing the border,” Rogers spokesman Chris Gustafson said.

“We are confident this letter will be dismissed,” Gustafson added. “Michiganders can rest assured we will respond outlining the baseless lies within this political stunt that were willfully written in full by the Detroit News.”

Michigan has a history of candidates being taken off the ballot for signature fraud and related problems. In 2022, former Detroit Police Chief James Craig was a leading candidate for governor before fraudulent signatures threw his campaign off course. Craig was also a leading candidate this year for Senate, but he suspended his 2024 campaign in what he called a “business decision.”

In 2012, former Michigan Republican Rep. Thaddeus McCotter testified in court after several of his high-ranking staffers were charged with conspiracy and other crimes due to submitting false petitions to qualify McCotter for the Republican primary that year. McCotter was not charged in the case and did not qualify for the ballot.

Whether or not an investigation into Rogers and the other Senate GOP candidates takes place remains to be seen. The DSCC and state party submitted their request outside of the official window for challenges in Michigan, according to the Detroit News.

While Rogers needs to rally enough voters to defeat Pensler, a self-funded businessman, in the primary, Democrats have mostly rallied around Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI). Slotkin is Michigan’s leading Democratic primary candidate for the Senate, a seat that could determine which party controls the chamber after the 2024 election.

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The Michigan Senate race is ranked “lean Democratic” by the Cook Political Report, with the political race tracker noting that Slotkin’s history of winning her swing seat over three elections proves her ability to appeal to independent voters.

Michigan itself is one of several key battleground states that could determine whether Trump defeats President Joe Biden in November. A Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll released this week found that across seven battleground states, including Michigan, Trump leads Biden, 48% to 44%.

The Washington Examiner reached out to Rogers’s campaign, the Michigan Department of State, and the Board of State Canvassers for comment.