And now, on the election fraud front...

Anne Manning Martin and Michael Walsh were both hoping to appear on the ballot in the upcoming Massachusetts primary, Martin as a candidate for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor, Walsh for the Republican nomination for attorney general. 

Unfortunately, there were a number of signatures on their nominating papers that weren't quite legit. Names appeared to be "written by the same person" and were listed on the papers for both candidates in "identical order." 

Moreover, both candidates also had nomination papers that listed signatures in the order they appeared in a voter database used by the Massachusetts Republican Party to help candidates find supporters. (Source: Boston Globe)

An expert - himself a signature gatherer - determined that:

...the mathematical likelihood of this occurring is zero and that these signatures are likely fraudulent.

Oh. 

When the Globe reached out to some of those whose signatures were falsely included on the nomination papers, one voter - who no longer lives in Massachusetts - said, "'I don't trust anybody anymore. It stinks.'" Another non-signer said "'I didn't write that. I don't even vote.'"

As a result of the chicanery, Manning Martin (who was campaigning as the de facto running mate of Mike Minogue who is odds-on likely to win the Republican gubernatorial primary come electionday on September 1) was tossed off the ballot. Due to a complaint-filing technicality, Walsh is still on.   

I can't really blame the candidates here, other than for procedural carelessness in not having someone on their team take a close look - or any look - at the signatures on the nominations petitions they submitted to appear on the ballot. And not notice that an awful lot of folks had the same signature.

Now, in a state where a lot of us olds went to parochial school back in the day, it is not entirely outside the realm of possibility that a lot of John Hancocks would show up, not with John Hancock's flowing script, but with drilled-in, never-forgotten Palmer Penmanship.

And you can't blame the candidates for hiring a signature gathering outfit to collect names for them. Yes, the magic number of 10,000 signatures can be gotten via grass roots efforts, but that's a big number, especially for a Republican in Massachusetts, where D's out number R's three-to-one. (Independents, which are the majority of Massachusetts voters, can sign nomination papers for candidates in either party. Thank you, Secretary of State Bill Galvin for your very informative web site.)

But some signature gatherer Joe Bronske, who "was paid thousands of dollars by Walsh and Manning Martin’s campaigns to collect signatures on their behalf, according to state records," turned out to be. 

When confronted, Bronske took the Fifth Amendment, as is done.

Bronske, a Republican operative who has served on the Board of (Election) Registrars in his town, of all things, has also been implicated in collecting bogus signatures for Republican secretary of state wannabe Anne Brensley. Many of her signatures were tossed, and she ended up not getting enough to appear on the ballot. She's now running as a write-in candidate.

Bronske's pitch to Brensley's campaign was:

For your campaign’s 10,000-signature requirement, I can:

• Map and target registered voters to ensure every collected signature is eligible and verifiable
• Recruit, train, and coordinate circulators across required districts
• Verify signatures against official voter registration databases
• Conduct internal audits to identify duplicates, errors, or incomplete entries before filing
• Coordinate filing with local election officials and the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth
• Prepare documentation and records to defend against potential challenges by focusing only on certified voters and using a rigorous accuracy-first process, the campaign maximizes valid signatures while avoiding wasted effort or risk of disqualification. (Source: New Bedford Guide)

Which all would have been fine and dandy if Bronske had actually delivered on his proposal, which he apparently did not.

I'm quite sure that it's not easy to collect 10,000 signatures. That's a lot of spending a lot of Saturdays standing outside the Market Basket trying to get harried shoppers to stop and sign papers. People are in a rush. People are suspicious, they're wary of fraud. People don't want to be bothered.

Everytime I'm asked, I sign papers for candidates for office. It should come as no surprise that I'm a registered D, but frankly I'd be mostly okay with signing for an R, if allowed. (Or at least I would have been back in the day when Massachusetts R's were mostly palatable to this D's sensiblities.)

In any case, I feel bad for these candidates who trusted (and paid) Bronske to find the signatures they needed to get on the ballot.

I suspect that he'll be out of the signature-gathering biz. Brensley for one was considering legal action against him. There may be civil penalties for Bronske. And there's been some tiny mention of jail time. 

 What a nasty scammer he turned out to be. We really don't need any more a-holes underminng the integrity of our elections, that's for sure.

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