Mass. Republicans caught up in a signature fraud controversy won’t be on September primary ballot, commission rules

Politics admin June 26, 2026 0 Comments

Mass. Republicans caught up in a signature fraud controversy won’t be on September primary ballot, commission rules

Two Republican candidates for statewide office, including the state party’s de facto nominee for attorney general, won’t appear on the September primary ballot after the state’s commission that oversees ballots determined that hundreds of nomination signatures they submitted were invalid.

Anne Manning Martin, a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, and Michael Walsh, the party’s endorsed candidate for attorney general, were both knocked off the ballot after the commission invalidated enough signatures collected from Massachusetts voters.

“In accordance with the Ballot Law Commission’s decisions, the names of Anne Manning Martin for Lieutenant Governor and Michael C. Walsh for Attorney General will not be printed on the September 1, 2026, state primary ballots,” said Deb O’Malley, a spokesperson for Secretary of State William Galvin’s office.

For Walsh, the commission invalidated 1,021 signatures of the 10,677 he turned in to the secretary of state’s office, leaving him hundreds of signatures short of the 10,000 required to make the ballot.

For Manning Martin, the commission invalidated 1,279 signatures her campaign submitted, leaving her with only 9,413 “valid signatures.”

“A general review of the certified signatures on the nomination papers also demonstrates they are likely fraudulent,” the commission wrote in the decision.

Walsh and Manning Martin did not immediately respond to requests comment.

The decision is the latest development in the signature fraud controversy that has now decimated the Republican ticket, knocking off two candidates for lieutenant governor and eliminating the party’s sole challenger to Attorney General Andrea Campbell. The state Republican party, already struggling to field candidates down-ballot, is now only officially challenging for three of the six statewide constitutional offices, all of which are currently held by Democrats.

Adam Roof, the state Democratic Party’s executive director, filed challenges with the State Ballot Law Commission earlier this month, alleging that “numerous” certified signatures the Walsh and Manning Martin campaigns submitted had been “fraudulently obtained.” Shawn Oliver, another Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, also challenged Manning Martin’s candidacy on similar grounds.

At issue were hundreds of signatures both Manning Martin and Walsh submitted to Secretary of State William F. Galvin’s office as part of the 10,000 certified signatures they needed to collect to qualify for the ballot. Galvin’s office alerted the candidates to the potentially fraudulent signatures after they were flagged by local clerks in Scituate, Hanover and Rockland.

The secretary’s office also flagged the concerns for Anne Brensley, the state Republican Party’s endorsed candidate for lieutenant governor. Brensley alleged that the signature gatherer she hired, Joe Bronske, failed to gather the number of signatures she had paid him for, and turned in some that were forged — including some that belonged to voters who had long since died, she told the panel during testimony Monday.

Brensley ultimately didn’t have enough signatures to make the ballot, she told the Globe in May.

Both Manning Martin and Walsh also hired Bronske to collect signatures, campaign finance records show. Bronske declined to testify before the commission.

The commission’s ruling effectively clears the Republican lieutenant governor primary field for Oliver, who’s campaigning as a running mate to GOP gubernatorial hopeful Brian Shortsleeve, though other candidates could still mount write-in campaigns.

Lawyers for Roof and Oliver spent several days arguing their cases before the commission, a quasi-judicial body. During the hearings, Dan Winslow, an attorney for Oliver and a former Republican state representative, alleged that the case amounted to “the largest case of forgery on nomination papers in the history of Massachusetts.”

Members of the five-person panel are appointed by the governor. Retired Judge Ernest Sarason, a Democrat, chairs the commission, which also includes attorney Joseph Eisenstadt, a Democrat; former state Senator and Democrat Joe Boncore; Kaitlyn Sprague, a Republican; and Jed Nosal, who is unenrolled.

The Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office told the Globe earlier this month they were investigating the swath of potentially fraudulent signatures.

“Our office is working with town clerks to investigate the validity of some ballot signatures collected in Scituate, Hanover, and Rockland,” Beth Stone, a spokesperson for the Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz, said in a June 15 statement. “The investigation is ongoing.”