LANSING – One candidate in the Nov. 5 election may have had too much success.
Republican Linsey Rogers ran for treasurer in Montmorency County — and won as the only candidate on the slate, according to information on the county website.
Rogers also ran for school board in Atlanta’s Montmorency community — and won there, too. He finished third among three candidates for three community board seats in Michigan’s northern Lower Peninsula, the website shows.
Rogers’ double victories are now the subject of a lawsuit. They also came up Friday at the Board of State Canvassers meeting in Lansing, where Assistant Attorney General Heather Meingast said the twin victories for Rogers appeared to violate Michigan law regarding incompatible public offices.
The unusual situation in Montmorency County came to light Friday when the Board of State Canvassers voted to certify the results of the Nov. 5 statewide election.
Meingast told board members they do not have the jurisdiction to become involved in such an issue. She recommended that the board certify the Michigan elections, including the two victories for Rogers, and allow the situation to be addressed elsewhere.
Under state law, no one can simultaneously hold two public offices that are considered incompatible.
Montmorency Secretary Cheryl Neilsen said current treasurer Cheri Eggett, who ran as a write-in candidate on Nov. 5, filed suit in Montmorency County Circuit Court over Rogers’ dual candidacy and lost. The case is now before the Michigan Court of Appeals, Neilsen said Friday. She declined to say whether she had determined whether the two posts were incompatible.
Rogers could not be reached, but she expressed her dual candidacies in a public post Oct. 3 on her Facebook page. Rogers said she is not convinced the two offices are incompatible, and if they were considered incompatible, her name should not have appeared twice on the county ballot. Rogers said if the positions prove to be incompatible, she is willing to relinquish her position on the school board to serve as county treasurer.
State law says public offices are incompatible if one is subordinate to the other, if one supervises the other, or if performing the duties of one public office could create a breach of duty with respect to the other public office. If you apply for two incompatible positions, a candidate may be disqualified from both.
“The two positions of the Treasurer of Montmorency County and the Atlanta School Board of Education have not been proven to be incompatible,” Rogers said on Facebook.
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In a statement that seemed inconsistent with the rest of her Oct. 3 post, Rogers said in the same Facebook post that she had abandoned her candidacy for school board even though her name would appear on the ballot.
Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on the Detroit Free Press: The Montmorency County candidate was elected to two separate offices on Nov. 5
