Their signatures helped get Republican candidates on the ballot. They say they never actually signed.
Andrew Tamburello’s signature was one of hundreds from voters purportedly living in Weymouth that Anne Manning Martin submitted to local officials to help get her name on the Republican primary ballot as a candidate for lieutenant governor.
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That was news to Tamburello, who has been living in Florida for more than a year.
“That was definitely not me,” Tamburello, 39, said in a phone interview from Ocala, Fla., where he moved in February 2025. “I actually support Republicans. I used to support [President Donald] Trump. But not anymore. Unfortunately, I don’t trust anybody anymore. It stinks.”
Tamburello is one of a dozen people who, in interviews with the Globe, said they did not sign nomination papers for Manning Martin or Michael Walsh, a Republican candidate for attorney general, even though their signatures — tied to their current or former addresses in Weymouth —appear on documents submitted by the two Republicans’ campaigns.
A state commission in June ruled that hundreds of signatures turned in by Manning Martin and Walsh this year were “likely fraudulent” or “non-genuine,” and barred them from appearing on the September primary ballot.
The commission’s rulings decimated the Republican ticket this year, leaving the party with candidates on the ballot for just three of the six statewide constitutional offices. Both Manning Martin and Walsh have appealed the decisions, with Walsh submitting several appeals, including to the state’s highest court and the US Supreme Court, citing technical errors to the challenge to his signatures.
The allegations have also drawn the attention of police and prosecutors. At least two district attorney’s offices are investigating, officials told the Globe. Submitting fraudulent signatures is illegal in Massachusetts, with punishments ranging from a $1,000 fine to up to a year in jail.
Local clerks from other towns, including Scituate, Hanover, and Rockland, had also flagged that signatures submitted to them were potentially fraudulent.
Many of the people whose signatures appeared on the nomination papers and spoke to the Globe said they did not consider themselves politically active. Others said they found it troubling, even “crazy,” their signatures had been used without their permission.
A signature purporting to be from Teresa Donnelly appeared on one of Walsh’s signature sheets.
“I didn’t write that,” Donnellysaid in an interview. “I don’t even vote.”
Bernie Connaughton’s signature appears in both Walsh and Manning Martin’s nomination papers. But Connaughton said he doesn’t know either of the two Republicans, and said he did not sign nomination papers for them.
“That’s not right,” Connaughton said. “It’s ridiculous. That shouldn’t be happening.”
A spokesperson for Manning Martin’s campaign declined to comment. Walsh shared copies of his appeals he filed to the commission’s ruling, but did not directly respond to a text message or a phone call seeking comment.
The state commission based its rulings knocking Manning Martin and Walsh from the ballot on testimony from two experts — longtime Massachusetts-based signature gatherer Harold Hubschman and Jennifer Naso, a forensics expert who used to work for the US Secret Service as a document analyst.
In Walsh’s case, Naso told the commission that most of the signatures on Walsh’s nomination papers from Weymouth and Scituate “were written by the same person.” In his testimony, Hubschman said there were dozens of nomination papers from Manning Martin and Walsh that listed signatures in “identical order.”
“Mr. Hubschman concludes the mathematical likelihood of this occurring is zero and that these signatures are likely fraudulent,” the commission wrote in its ruling on Manning Martin’s signatures.
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.
A spokesperson for the Plymouth County District Attorney’s office said Thursday there is an “active and ongoing” investigation into signatures submitted in Scituate, Hanover, and Rockland. The Norfolk County District Attorney’s office is, too, investigating, including into signatures submitted in Weymouth, said David Linton, a spokesperson for the office.
At the center of the scandal is Joe Bronske, who owns the company Ancestors’ Trail Genealogy, and was paid thousands of dollars by Walsh and Manning Martin’s campaigns to collect signatures on their behalf, according to state records.
Bronske, who until recently served as chair of the Weymouth Republican Town Committee, did not respond to multiple requests for comment Thursday.
Bronske was also enlisted by Anne Brensley, the Massachusetts Republican Party’s endorsed candidate for lieutenant governor, to help collect the 10,000 signatures she needed to get on the ballot. But Brensley ultimately did not have enough to qualify and accused Bronske of failing to gather the number of signatures she had paid him for, and turning in some that were forged — including some, she told the commission, that belonged to voters who had long since died.
During a deposition in June ahead of the ballot commission’s hearings, Bronske did not directly answer questions about his “direct participation in forging voter signatures” or “his knowledge of anyone else forging voter signatures,” according to the commission.
Instead, in response to questions from a lawyer for GOP lieutenant governor candidate Shawn Oliver — who challenged Manning Martin’s place on the ballot — Bronske invoked his 5th Amendment rights, which provide for protection against self-incrimination.
“Taking the 5th demonstrates to the commission that Mr. Bronske has something to hide,” the panel wrote in its ruling.
In an appeal she filed in Essex Superior Court on Wednesday, Manning Martin argued she was blocked from the ballot “without any live testimony witnesses confirming their signatures were forged.”
Several, in fact, told the Globe they were.
Rachael Wayland’s signature and address appear on one of Manning Martin’s signature papers from Weymouth. But Wayland said she has “never even heard” of Manning Martin and “did not” sign the nomination paper.
“To be honest, I’m not even a really good voter at all, so I don’t know why it would be on there,” Wayland, 47, said in an interview.
Signatures and addresses connected to Tess Abboud, as well as at least two of her family members, were listed in Walsh’s signature sheets.
“That’s crazy. We definitely did not sign anything,” she said in an interview. “I definitely did not. I don’t believe my family would have signed for that kind of a candidate either.”
Matt Stout of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
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