This is going to be complicated, and fair warning, it involves a lot of talk about nominating petitions and signature gatherers and various boards of canvassers, which seems like the text equivalent of Ambien.

But if you stick with me, we'll get to the part where a congressional campaign forged a Free Press reporter's signature on a nominating petition, and a host of other signature problems alleged by a sitting congressman — who is also seeking to have top state election officials' name struck from those petitions — and the implications all of this has for an important Detroit congressional race.

The petitions in question belong to Adam Hollier, a former state senator who is seeking to unseat incumbent U.S Rep. Shri Thanedar, elected in 2022 to represent Michigan's 13th District.

I generally try to stay in my lane, and I'm a columnist, not a handwriting analyst. But it's hard to look at the signatures on nine of 10 petition pages provided to the Free Press by Thanedar and not conclude that they'd been written by the same person; that they're forgeries, and not very good ones, at that.