DETROIT — Members of the Clinton County Republican Party discussed a plan to submit inconsistent signatures with absentee ballots in order "to test" Michigan's voting verification process, according to a Saturday newsletter from the organization.

Ultimately, the Clinton County GOP decided not to go forward with the idea because of concerns about drawing criminal charges, the newsletter said.

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

Clinton County, which is located north of Lansing, has a population of about 80,000. The Saturday newsletter 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.

In an interview Monday, Willis said the signature-testing plan had been developed by a GOP precinct delegate who "really wanted" to do it. The strategy would have involved Republicans filling out the absentee ballots and signing their own envelope with a different signature than they normally would, Willis explained.

In his weekly county GOP newsletter, he described the idea as "a suggestion to test the process to see if anyone is checking the ballot envelopes."

"We actually discussed the idea of signing some of the absentee ballots for some of the county residents to see if signatures that wouldn’t match their (qualified voter file) signature on file with the state would be pushed through the verification process and not challenged," Willis wrote in the newsletter.

Although the county party decided not to go along with the plan, Willis said, in an interview, it was possible some individuals had gone forward with it on their own.

According to the Michigan Secretary of State's official manual for election officials, clerks across the state "must verify that the signature on a returned absent voter ballot envelope matches the voter’s signature on file."

If the signature doesn't match, the clerk must "immediately attempt to contact the voter and 'cure' the signature," the manual says.

In fact, Willis said this fall, he was contacted because his local clerk determined the signature on his absentee ballot didn't match the one on file.

"She said I would have to return to the township office and fill out a 'cure' form confirming that the signature on the ballot envelope was actually mine and that they would need to look at my driver's license for verification," Willis wrote in his newsletter in a section directly under one about testing the process.

Angela Benander, spokeswoman for Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson's office, said the office encourages people to not commit any type of election fraud in an attempt to prove a point. If people have evidence of election fraud, they should report it to law enforcement, Benander said.

After Republican Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, he made an array unproven or false claims about widespread voter fraud in Michigan. Democrat Joe Biden won the state's election by 154,000 votes or 3 percentage points, 51%-48%. The outcome has been upheld by audits, a series of court rulings and an investigation by a Republican-controlled state Senate committee.

Republicans, however, have repeatedly voiced concerns about the absentee ballot verification process.

"Local city and township clerks are trained in signature verification by the Michigan Bureau of Elections," the Secretary of State's website says. "Local clerks review and compare the signature on each absentee ballot to the signature on the return envelope, and to the voter’s signature on record to confirm its validity."

As of Monday, more than 1 million Michigan voters had returned absentee ballots for the 2024 presidential election.

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