Petitions Spark Fraud Charges

As president of the Macomb County NAACP, Ruthie Stevenson was dumbfounded, and a bit amused, last summer when a stranger outside the Mt. Clemens post office told her where she and her organization stood on affirmative action.

While asking her to sign a petition supporting the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, the man confidently told her that she, Stevenson, and the group she presides over supported the proposal, which in fact she couldn't oppose more.

With enough valid petition signatures the initiative will be placed on the November 2006 ballot as a constitutional amendment. It would ban public agencies from using race, gender and other personal factors in hiring and school admissions.

The man went on to describe the initiative as being "for civil rights" and if it passed, he told her, it would "make the playing field fair for everybody," according to an affidavit signed by Stevenson.

The affidavit is among 22 filed with a legal brief that seeks to have the state Board of Canvassers invalidate petitions like the one put before Stevenson. The brief alleges that the signature collectors, many of whom were paid per name, committed fraud.

The canvassing board is expected to hear such stories on Tuesday in Lansing.

What has to be determined is whether 195 names flagged during a routine review by the state Election Bureau were gathered by misrepresentation and, if they were, whether misrepresentation leads to invalidation. The cancellation of 153 signatures would require the massive name-collecting effort to start again.

Stevenson's exchange at the post office ended when she identified herself with a business card and made sure her position was clear.

The stranger walked away, but the question left for Stevenson and civil rights groups working to keep the lighting-rod issue off the ballot is, how many Ruthie Stevensons are out there?

Other claims of deceit, from judges in Wayne and Genesee counties and folks outside the Halo Burger in Flint and the CVS in Detroit, are expected at the hearing.

The bipartisan, four-member Board of Canvassers decides whether a proposal will be printed on a ballot, but State Rep. Leon Drolet, R-Clinton Township, said Attorney General Mike Cox ruled Friday that the board isn't charged with investigating signature gathering.

Drolet had requested Cox's opinion, and on Sunday, he questioned the claims of groups opposing the initiative, such as By Any Means Necessary (BAMN). He said they may well be asking leading questions, too.

"How did they ask the questions for these affidavits?" Drolet said.

He also stood by the signature gathering process except to say that, "thousands and thousands of people were circulating petitions so we couldn't know what every single person was doing."

"All we do know is what we told people to tell people, and that was the truth."

He said it would damage the petition gathering process permanently if investigations of signatures were permitted.

At a rally Sunday in downtown Detroit, state Sens. Martha Scott, D-Highland Park, and Hansen Clarke, D-Detroit, promised to intervene by holding their own hearings if the canvassers do not investigate.

George Washington, an attorney for BAMN, said it's the board's duty to protect voters.

"This was cruelty committed against the people who most need what we're fighting to protect," Washington said.

He and his colleagues also obtained affidavits from signature gatherers. They mostly worked in predominantly black communities, and they said in affidavits that they were lied to by supervisors about the meaning of the petition or told to say the petition would "get kids into college" or "get equal rights."

The board received the affidavits late last week, a day or two after the state Bureau of Elections issued a review of 500 signatures, the standard sample size for the 500,000-plus signatures collected.

Reviewing a sample is routine; studying affidavits alleging fraud and deceit is not.

In its review, the elections bureau did not decide whether there were enough signatures to send the proposal to its grave. The review deemed 50 signatures invalid. Some were kicked back because the signer was not a registered voter or not eligible to vote. Other names were thrown out for being illegible.

The elections bureau took no stand on whether misrepresentation by signature gatherers would void signatures and said it "reaches no conclusions on the legal authority of the board to consider misrepresentation as a basis for finding petition signatures invalid."

As Doyle O'Connor, vice-chairman of the canvassers board, said during an interview with the Lansing State Journal for a story published Sunday, "We've never been faced with anything like this."

Contact KIM NORTH SHINE at 313-223-4557 or kshine@freepress.com.