Two men convicted in a Michigan election petition scandal that derailed Republican bids for the 2022 governor’s race were sentenced later for their roles in a forgery case involving forged signatures, according to an AP report Monday.
Shawn Wilmoth and Willie Reed were each convicted by a jury of forgery, running a criminal enterprise and other crimes after a trial in suburban Detroit, AP said. Their sentencing is scheduled for March 18, while the jury found Jamie Wilmoth not guilty.
The case centered on election petitions that, prosecutors said, were riddled with bogus signatures. AP reported that the result was that multiple candidates did not have enough valid signatures to qualify for the 2022 Republican primary election ballot.
AP said the candidates affected included former Detroit Police Chief James Craig and businessman Perry Johnson, both of whom were among the Republican hopefuls that the petition effort was intended to help. Under Michigan’s ballot rules, candidates needed 15,000 signatures from voters to get on the GOP primary ballot.
The Michigan Attorney General’s office said the signature fraud meant voters were blocked from choosing among those candidates in the 2022 gubernatorial election, with Attorney General Dana Nessel calling the impact a denial of choice. Nessel said the fraud “denied millions of Michiganders a choice in the 2022 gubernatorial election,” AP reported.
AP said nine campaigns paid more than $700,000 to businesses affiliated with Reed and Shawn Wilmoth to get signatures, according to the attorney general’s office. State elections staff believed people at times “simply sat around a table, signed petitions and passed them around,” AP reported.
Defense attorneys, AP said, tried to shift blame to petition circulators by arguing that Shawn Wilmoth and Reed themselves had been defrauded as part of a larger signature-collection operation. AP reported that the jury rejected that defense for Shawn Wilmoth and Reed, but returned a not-guilty verdict for Jamie Wilmoth.
After the signature scandal, Tudor Dixon emerged as the Republican nominee for governor and lost to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, AP said.