Fraudulent signature

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A fraudulent signature is a signature on a petition in support of a ballot measure or candidate seeking to qualify for the ballot that suffers from one or more fatal flaws introduced either by the circulator or the signer.

Fraudulent signatures are a subsection of the category of invalid signatures. Not all invalid signatures are fraudulent, but all fraudulent signatures are invalid and will be declared invalid by the office in charge of determining their validity if the office is able to determine that the signature is fraudulent. Signature validation processes vary from state to state. A Ballotpedia study of a sample of citizen-initiated ballot measures found that in 2018, nearly one-quarter of submitted signatures were determined to be invalid.

This and other pages on Ballotpedia cover types of election and voter fraud for which there are documented cases and around which there is debate concerning the frequency of instances and proposed responses.

Types of fraudulent signatures

Circulator fraud

A circulator can introduce fraud by:

Signer fraud

A petition signer can introduce fraud by:

  • Affixing to the petition an invented name.
  • Affixing to the petition the name of someone other than the signer.

Signers can also make various mistakes in signing petitions, even intentional mistakes, that are not generally regarded as legally fraudulent. These signing errors include:

  • Signing the same petition more than once.
  • Signing a petition that includes the certification that the signer is a registered voter when the signer is not in fact a registered voter. (If the signer knows he or she isn't registered to vote, this could be considered intentional fraud. However, in most cases where a non-registered voter signs a petition, the signer isn't sure if he or she is currently and legally registered to vote.)
  • Signing the petition "on behalf of" a nearby or absent spouse or close relative, because the signer is positive that the spouse or close relative would sign the petition, if the spouse or close relative wasn't otherwise engaged or physically absent.

Relevant research

A sampling of research related to fraudulent signatures in politics, arranged in reverse chronological order, is presented below.

Heritage Foundation

The Heritage Foundation's Voter Fraud Database contained, as of December 2019, 66 cases dating back to 2001 where either a criminal conviction for ballot petition fraud or a judicial finding that such fraud had occurred was reached. Of the 66 cases, 58 involved wrongdoing on the part of one person, four involved wrongdoing by two people, three involved wrongdoing by three people, and one involved wrongdoing by 10 people. The state with the most recorded instances of ballot petition fraud was Ohio with nine, followed by Wisconsin with eight and New York with seven. Heritage states that its database contains a sampling of "election fraud cases from across the country, broken down by state, where individuals were either convicted of vote fraud, or where a judge overturned the results of an election."[1]

Jocelyn Benson review

Then-law professor Jocelyn Benson authored an article examining fraudulent signatures which was published in the Fordham Urban Law Journal in 2007.[2] The article examined allegations of fraudulent signature collection in support of the 2006 Michigan Civil Rights Amendment.

In testimony before the Michigan Civil Rights Commission, petition circulators and signers said that petition circulators had misrepresented the contents of the ballot measure to signers and that some circulators had themselves not been informed of the measure's content.

During its review of signatures as part of qualifying the measure for the ballot, the Michigan Secretary of State determined that 450 of the 500 signatures in its sample were valid on the basis that they matched voter records. A 501(c)(3) group challenged the finding, claiming that only 175 of the signatures had both matched voter records and had been collected by petition gatherers who had accurately represented the measure's contents. It submitted affidavits from individuals whose signatures were included in the statement claiming that the measure had been misrepresented to them.

A federal judge ruled that the measure could appear on the 2006 ballot, where it was approved by a margin of 15.8 percentage points.[3]

Case studies

  • Three campaign workers involved in circulating petitions in support of David Osborne's independent bid for the county commission in Chatham County, Georgia, were implicated in a probe investigating fraudulent signatures. Kim Ross, who was accused of falsely signing petitions as a circulator, and Alexia Williams, who was accused of falsely signing a transmittal document for the submitted petitions, were each fined $300. Edwin Morris, who was accused of conspiring to submit petitions containing forged signatures, was issued a public reprimand and barred from participating in political campaigns for ten years.[4][5]
  • On March 11, 2009, Diana Clagett pleaded guilty to a single felony count of making false statements. Clagett worked as a signature gatherer for Oregon Ballot Measure 42. Twenty-seven signatures Clagett turned in were flagged by the secretary of state's office as either not belonging to registered voters or not matching the voters' signatures on their registration cards. Clagett was placed on probation.[6]

See also

Footnotes