Jase Bolger Should Resign As Speaker

Petition Background

If it weren’t for the extensive text-message record it would have been the perfect Kansas City shuffle. Democrat Rep. Roy Schmidt plotted with Republican House Speaker Jase Bolger to switch parties a moment before the filing deadline and outsource the competition to a candidate of their choosing: his son’s friend. In effect, robbing Michigan’s 76th District of their voice.

Bill Forsyth, the Republican prosecutor, wrote that the ploy “was clearly intended to undermine the election and to perpetrate a ‘fraud’ on the electorate.” Adding insult to injury, he declared, “As a Republican elected official, I am embarrassed and offended by what transpired.” And so is the rest of the Michigan.

Not content to stop there, the prosecutor added:

“Incredibly, while it would be illegal to pay a boxer to take a ‘dive,’ or a basketball player to ‘point-shave,’ it is not currently a crime in Michigan to recruit someone to run for public office, place them on the ballot at the ‘eleventh hour' and essentially pay them to make no effort to win."

Sign our petition calling on Jase Bolger to resign as Speaker of the House.

Bolger and Schmidt have managed to avoid criminal charges so far, but we can’t let them get away with this clear betrayal of the public trust.