• Eight major party gubernatorial candidates file signatures to make Michigan’s Aug. 4 primary ballot
• Republican hopeful Perry Johnson says his campaign took extra steps to review signatures after disqualification four years ago
• No major surprises in Michigan US Senate race, with all four high-profile candidates filing signatures for the primary ballot

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LANSING — Nearly four years after a signature fraud scandal kept him off Michigan’s primary ballot, gubernatorial hopeful Perry Johnson returned to the Michigan Bureau of Elections on Tuesday to try again.

The Bloomfield Township businessman was the eighth of nine major party candidates to file necessary voter signatures to qualify for the Aug. 4 primary. His campaign said he was delivering more than 29,000 — well above the 15,000 required but just shy of the maximum 30,000 allowed. 

Now, state elections officials will review the signatures to determine how many are valid before recommending to the Board of State Canvassers whether to certify candidates for the primary ballot.  

“This time was a dramatic difference in so many different ways, because I wasn’t going to take any chances,” Johnson said after dropping off several boxes of petitions at a state office building in Lansing. “I’m the quality guru, so I better get quality petitions.”

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After outsourcing signature oversight four years ago, Johnson’s campaign kept the process in-house this time around. He said they had “a whole team of people” spend two and a half weeks reviewing petition signatures and crossing out any that might be suspect.

He was one of five Republican candidates to drop off petitions in the past week, joining pastor Ralph Rebandt, state Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt, former state House Speaker Tom Leonard and US Rep. John James. 

In the Democratic primary, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson both filed voter signatures, as did a lesser-known candidate Kim Thomas, a former federal auditor from Battle Creek.

Benson is a heavy favorite, but as he dropped off his petition signatures in Lansing on Friday, Swanson made it clear he does not plan to drop out.

“I’m not a lieutenant governor. I’m not going to withdraw,” he told reporters. “I’ve got the petitions. I’ve been counted out from the beginning — not today.”

The filings mean the Michigan gubernatorial field is largely set. 

But former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, who left the Democratic Party to run as an independent, didn’t need to file this week because he won’t be on the August primary ballot. To appear in the November general election, he’ll need to file a minimum of 12,000 valid signatures by July 16.

Third parties will choose their general election candidates at nominating conventions, a process major parties also used until the 1908 constitution required statewide primaries. 

Michigan now has the most stringent requirements for statewide candidates to get on the primary ballot, with its demands for 15,000 valid signatures the highest of all states.

The primary ballot won’t be finalized until the state’s Bureau of Elections reviews the signatures and the bipartisan Board of State Canvassers takes a May vote to certify candidates for the August primary.

Senate field comes into focus

There were no major filing deadline misses in the heated race for Michigan’s open US Senate seat — but long shot Republican candidate Bernadette Smith submitted signatures just a week after announcing she would start collecting.

GOP frontrunner Mike Rogers also submitted signatures to make the August primary ballot, as did Democrats Abdul El-Sayed, Mallory McMorrow and Haley Stevens, who are locked in a tight primary race.

Rogers said he finished collecting signatures in December, but waited to submit.

“We’ve had these all boxed up ready to go” and placed them in fireproof storage, Rogers said. “We wanted to make sure there was no accidents on our signatures.”

Little-known Democrat Rachel Howard withdrew from the Senate race Friday, saying she did not see a “viable path forward” for her campaign.

Candidates had until 4 p.m. to file signatures, but the state had not yet published a final list as of 5:20 p.m.

Four years later

At a single Board of State Canvassers meeting In May 2022, officials flagged nearly 70,000 fake signatures that disqualified five of 10 Republican gubernatorial candidates from that year’s primary ballot, including Johnson, along with three judicial candidates.

Scott Greenlee, a Republican political consultant, said candidates who had submitted signatures provided by paid circulators were blindsided at the time.

“Nobody would have ever guessed that (they could get fraudulent signatures) because of the legal consequences,” he said in an interview. “I mean, people are sitting in jail right now.”

Two of the three petition firm owners implicated in the 2022 signature fraud scandal were eventually convicted and sentenced earlier this year for conducting a criminal enterprise. They will spend years in prison.

But in the intervening years, it’s campaigns that have changed, not policy. 

State Sen. Jeremy Moss introduced a series of bills to reform the petition process, but the legislation never gained traction. Among other things, he wanted to ban per-signature pay for circulators.

“That presents a financial incentive for (circulators) to say anything and do anything to get more and more signatures, whether lying about a ballot proposal and just saying anything to get somebody to sign on or on the candidate end fraudulently submitting signatures,” he said.

Moss, a Democrat who is currently running to succeed Haley Stevens in the 11th Congressional District, said he had 50 volunteers collect the roughly 1,800 he submitted to get on the ballot.

State Sen. Jeremy Moss introduced a series of bills to reform the petition process — including a proposal to ban per-signature payments that could incentivize circulator forgery — but the legislation never gained traction.

One bill that would’ve mandated random sampling of petition signatures for validity was vetoed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in January 2025 because she said the proposal did not go far enough, arguing the law should instead require “exhaustive review of signatures to ensure no fraud exists.”

Extra effort

Candidates are leaving less to chance this time around.

James, an early frontrunner for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, said his campaign collected more than 30,000 signatures and then conducted “audits to make sure that we have high quality signatures” to submit. 

There’s no easy way for campaigns themselves to verify the validity of signatures because the state doesn’t make the signatures voters submit when they register to vote publicly available. 

But this year, the Johnson campaign collected signees’ mobile numbers and compared those against public records, texting the individuals to “confirm that they indeed remember signing a petition two months ago,” said consultant John Yob. 

He suggested Michigan should allow digital signatures, as Utah does.

“I think technology has advanced so much since the law was written that it would make sense to improve the process,” he said.

Despite warnings their petitions will be scrutinized, some candidates have still struggled with the process. Another handful of congressional hopefuls failed to make the ballot in 2024 because of similar fraud issues. 

Some of the gubernatorial candidates who made the ballot four years ago, such as Rebandt, did so by relying on volunteers. But many campaigns still utilized paid circulators. 

James’ campaign said volunteers collected “more than 10,000” signatures, with the rest presumably collected by paid circulators. Johnson estimated more than half of his signatures came from volunteers. Swanson estimated his signatures were 65% volunteer-gathered.

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