Michigan GOP halted plan to 'test' mismatching signatures fearing criminal charges: report

Concerns about Michigan’s election system spurred members of a local Republican party to explore submitting “inconsistent signatures with absentee ballots” in an effort to test the battleground state’s voting verification process.

Citing a newsletter the Clinton County Republican Party released Saturday detailing their ill-fated plan, The Detroit News reported that the group ultimately scuttled the idea over concerns it could result in criminal charges.

“After some discussion and the possibility of being charged with election interference or potentially fraud, we decided to not pursue that course of action,” Stephen Willis, chairman of the county party, wrote in the newsletter obtained by The Detroit News.

The publication noted that the strategy would have involved “Republicans filling out the absentee ballots and signing their own envelope with a different signature than they normally would,” according to an interview it conducted with Willis on Monday.

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In his weekly county GOP newsletter, Willis described the idea as “a suggestion to test the process to see if anyone is checking the ballot envelopes.” He told the paper that although not officially sanctioned by the county party, "it was possible some individuals had gone forward with it on their own."

The actions described in the newsletter, the publication notes, “points to both the concerns some Republicans continue to have about Michigan's election system and the lengths they've been considering going to in order to investigate their worries, less than two weeks before the pivotal Nov. 5 presidential election.”

The secretary of state’s office encouraged people “to not commit any type of election fraud in an attempt to prove a point,” The Detroit News reported. It added that more than 1 million absentee ballots had been returned by Michigan voters as of Monday.