A-G To Investigate McCotter Petition Flap

LANSING (WWJ/AP) - Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette's criminal division will look into possible fraud involving nominating petitions submitted to state election officials by U.S. Rep. Thaddeus McCotter.

Schuette acted at the request of the state's elections bureau.

McCotter, a Republican, submitted well over the 1,000 petition signatures required to get his name on the August 7 Republican primary ballot, but elections officials said only 244 names appear to be valid.

The submitted petitions have sections that don't line up or have been cut off, and some of the signatures appear to have been copied from other petitions and pasted onto new ones to make it look as though McCotter had the number required.

Michigan Democratic Chairman Mark Brewer said in a Thursday release that he'd counted 14 petition signature gatherers on the forms submitted to the secretary of state's office, including five McCotter congressional staff members and several local elected officials and GOP activists from the 11th District, which now stretches through parts of Oakland and Wayne counties outside Detroit.

McCotter himself has said he doesn't know what happened and welcomes an investigation.

McCotter has represented the 11th Congressional District, including parts of western Wayne and Oakland counties, for a decade. He's now facing the prospect of mounting a complicated and expensive write-in campaign to hold onto his job.

Only one other Republican is on the primary ballot, Kerry Bentivolio of Milford. Two Wayne County residents, William Roberts of Redford Township and Taj Syed of Canton Township, will face off in the Democratic primary.

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