LANSING – The Bureau of Elections staff in a report to the Board of State Canvassers said Protecting Michigan Taxpayers came up short of the necessary signatures to put its voter-initiated act repealing the prevailing wage before the Michigan Legislature.
The report, released Monday, said only 301 of the 509 signatures in the sample pulled from 388,310 petition signatures overall were valid. For certification, 348 had to be valid. To at least remain alive for review of a larger sample, 315 had to be valid. Any number below 315 means rejection.
At 301 valid signatures, the staff report said that meant the group was an estimated 22,894 signatures short of the minimum 252,523 needed to put the proposal before the Legislature.
A week ago, Protect Michigan Jobs, which supports the prevailing wage, said its analysis showed rampant duplication in the petition would leave it well short of approval. Initially, Protecting Michigan Taxpayers defended its filing, but by last Friday declared it had concluded it lacked enough valid signatures from registered voters.
Protecting Michigan Taxpayers submitted 391,410 signatures, but the Bureau of Elections dumped 3,100 signatures at the beginning mainly because of a problem with the circulator certification or a defective heading on the petition.
Of the 509 signatures in the sample, the bureau staff found 104 invalid because of the signer’s voter registration status, 27 invalid because they were facially defective (date/address/jurisdiction error), 10 invalid due to signature error, four invalid due to circulator error and 63 invalid due to duplicate signatures.
If someone signs a petition more than once, then all duplicates become invalid.
The Protect Michigan Jobs challenge charged that 79 signatures in the sample were duplicates. The bureau staff concurred on 63 and said of the remaining 16, 12 already were thrown out by the staff for other reasons and four had been determined facially invalid or the signatures did not match.’
Protect Michigan Jobs, as part of its challenge, also asked the departments of State and Attorney General to launch an investigation into the breaking of any laws in the petition gathering process.
Department of State spokesperson Fred Woodhams said no decision would be made on an investigation until the Board of State Canvassers completes its work. The board has scheduled a meeting for Thursday on the staff report.
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