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The NPR Politics Podcast

Fraud Risk? Candidates Pay Signature Gatherers To Get On Ballot

The NPR Politics Podcast

NPR

Politics, News, Daily News

4.425.7K Ratings

🗓️ 6 April 2023

⏱️ 13 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Want to put yourself or your cause on the ballot? Generally, you need to gather signatures first in order to signal support for your message. Last year, five would-be GOP gubernatorial hopefuls in Michigan were disqualified after allegedly fraudulent signatures were discovered on their petition documents. Now, election officials are raising the alarm about the risks associated with paid signature-gathering.

This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, voting correspondent Miles Parks, and voting correspondent Ashley Lopez.

The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It is edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Research and fact-checking by Devin Speak.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hi, this is Scott in my kitchen in New York decorating a cake for Wilson or 13 year old Beagle's bark mitzvah

0:07.2

This podcast was recorded at

0:09.9

Oh my god

0:11.2

one oh six p.m. on

0:14.0

Thursday the 6th of April

0:16.5

Things may have changed by the time you hear it. I will somehow still be responsible to make his celebration happen

0:23.3

Even though it was my adult daughter's idea

0:26.3

Wilson is eagerly supervising my work. Okay. Here's the show

0:30.0

Does he know his Torah portion and what is his Torah portion that had that time

0:38.3

I had like two reveals like it was like I thought it was a kid and then it was a dog and then the bark mitzvah

0:42.4

Just nailed it nailed a bunch of life. I'm very upset that I've gone through life never hearing the term bark mitzvah

0:48.0

This is such a good day. Hey there. It's the NPR politics podcast. I'm Tamer Keith. I cover the White House

0:54.1

I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting and I'm Ashley Lopez. I also cover voting the

0:58.3

2022 Michigan gubernatorial primary was up ended when several GOP candidates turned in faulty signatures on the petitions required to enter the race

1:09.2

Now to the shake up in the race for governor five Republican candidates now officially thrown off the ballot

1:15.0

That's half the field the problem was petition signature fraud and it is an issue many campaign professionals and elections officials are worried about

1:24.1

Ashley, this is a story that you've been reporting. So let's start with what happened in Michigan

1:29.4

Yeah, so last year a slew of campaigns up and down the ballot in Michigan were unable to get their candidate or their issue on the ballot

1:36.7

Because they turned in too many invalid signatures to the state and not the required number of valid signatures

1:42.5

It turns out a lot of these campaigns had hired people to help them collect signatures

1:46.7

Election officials looked into what happened later and they found that something like 36 signature gather submitted fraudulent sheets

1:52.6

They also found at least 68,000 invalid signatures were submitted across something like

...

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