Jeff Beatty issued a press release that a letter was hand delivered to Bill Galvin to investigate voter fraud by the Ogonowski campaign. As to the letter, (which is listed under the press release with affidavit) states:
The letter points to an affidavit signed by a registered Republican voter in Chelmsford, MA stating that his signature was fraudulently placed on nomination papers for Mr. Ogonowski’s campaign. This voter was also told that, in addition to his faked signature, deceased individuals also appeared on some of Mr. Ogonowski’s nomination papers.
Oops!
Beatty urges Galvin to pursue criminal fraud and identity theft crimes:
1. We ask that you inform and involve the Law Enforcement resources of the Commonwealth to investigate the information included in the above mentioned affidavit (In addition to being a possible violation of Ballot Law, the alleged fraudulent signature and alleged signatures of deceased persons are potentially criminal fraud and identity theft crimes).
2. We ask that you further engage the Law Enforcement resources of the Commonwealth to investigate any other similar reports from City and Town Clerks or citizens.
Ogo say it ain’t so.
UPDATE:
From the Herald
Ogo’s camp says it’s someone else’s fault:
A spokeswoman for the Ogonowski campaign said in a statement that it did not deliberately tamper with the nomination papers.
“I think it’s incredibly inappropriate to make these accusations against Jim Ogonowski,” said the spokeswoman, Alicia Preston. “We can’t control the people who walk up and sign on and we can’t control where they sign. That’s why there’s a certification process, and this shows that the process is flawed.”
Galvin’s office statement:
Galvin’s spokesman Brian McNiff said all complaints about inaccuracies or fraud on nomination papers go before the State Ballot Law Commission.
The commission will review the information and make a ruling, which could include removing the candidate’s name from an election ballot.
If fraud is found, the panel could forward the information to the attorney general’s office for prosecution
So 22000 signatures were collected by the Ogonowski Campaign. We are to believe that the campaign had in their possession EVERY signature sheet at all times. Then we are to believe that the campaign was stupid enough to fradulently sign Peter Dulchinos’s name to the signature sheets. Peter is suporting Jeff and has publicly been doing so all along. The Ogo campaign knew that and still decided to forge his signature. Give me a break. This is laughable on its face. Anybody that knows anything about signature gathering would see that.
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p>Oh and another thing did you all see that Deval Patricks former campaign press guy is working for a conservative republican……… interesting no?
that’s what the State Ballot Law Commission will review.
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p>Unless one his volunteers is the kid from the Sixth Sense they have some explaining to do over the signatures of deceased residents. That sound like someone writing from a list.
campaign that did that and dropped off the list at Ogonowski HQ. It seems like there is a tremendously high burden of proof in a case like this.
No…
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p>The one thing that seems pretty likely is that Beatty will be contesting his signatures. Galvin says 10%, so 11000 after town clerk review, he might need more.
that says to me that this could as easily be a slimy set up by another campaign as it could be an overzealous og supporter. in either case, it is the same thing that happened with the anti-equality marriage amendment petition. if i were og, i ask rob willington a stern question or two. he’s the most obvious common denominator.
…amd slightly off topic. The Ogo campaign collected 22,000 sigs and with one day to go for city/town clerks to certify them, only about 9800 are valid? Wow, if that is true, it at least points to bad quality control on the part of the Ogo campaign…begining with bad training for the volunteers collecting the sigs and bad monitoring of the sheets being passed into the campaign. With regards to the latter point, the sheets should be reviewed to ascertain stray marks or the readablity of the sigs, giving the campaign the ability to estimate their certification rate and make adjustments accordingly. (Submitting some sheets early and seeing what the cerification rate is, is always a good idea.)
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p>This certainly makes a case for paid signiture collectors. Although often times the campaign field staff collects the bulk of the sigs and this again raises some questions about what they were doing. (I’m not talking about the alledge forgery or dead people’s sigs–that will remain a mystery and Eabo’s theory is as good as any…I’m talking about the less than 45% certifies signiture rate.)
It makes the case for ensuring that your sig gatherers are well trained, be they volunteers or paid staff.
there is something a miss with collecting 22,000 signatures and more than half deemed invalid. Then on top of that you have an issue raised about fraud. How long has this signature process been going on in the state? Has something changed? Beatty had no problems, Ogo another story, must be some poor signature gatherers or someone faking a sheet.
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p>You know what, where there’s smoke there’s fire. I’d be surprised if nothing else comes up after this.
are individual signature sheets traceable back to the signature gatherer?
Signature gatherers do not sign the papers onto which they gather signatures.
After you have taken the trouble to get some signatures on some candidate’s nomination papers, you might either
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p>A) Turn them in to the town clerk yourself (they will take your name so that you can get them back) or
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p>B) Give them to someone in your candidate’s campaign office.
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p>If the latter is the path of choice, then the fault lies in sloppiness of the campaign staff if they have lost the chain of evidence on these papers.
B is more typical, but usually there’s no need to mark the name of the gatherer on the signature paper. So I wouldn’t characterize not doing so as “sloppiness”.
that would be a “stray mark” and would render the paper void.
photocopy all the sheets and have the collector sign the photocopies for your records. that in itself would take some extra coordination, though, as many people mail in or otherwise hand in papers informally second-hand.
Shouldn’t most campaigns do this record keeping pro forma? Don’t they want a record of who signed the nomination papers – and more importantly – who is helping do the work? We live in the 21st century of intertubes and databasics! Get clicking in that SAGE account or get out of the way.
I’ve never seen it and I’ve been active for over a decade. The charge is ridiculous on it’s face.
Speaking in assertions may get you somewhere with the weak-brained set, but it doesn’t wash here. I got a very pleasant thank you call from the person that was in charge of papers this year. My batting average this year was over 80% valid certified signatures. I wouldn’t be so quick on the draw with the word “nobody”.
When I turn in signatures, they are date and time stamped, as is a receipt with a copy retained by the clerk on which my name goes so I can claim them later.
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p>Now my clerk knows me – I’m not asked for photo ID or anything at town hall – but I do have to give my name and sign the receipt.
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p>If other town halls do this, there would be a correlating date and time stamp to a receipt, and the clerk can get a name. If that name if Boris Yeltsin, well, maybe we DO need photo ID….
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p>However – Peter Dulchinos, the person who swore out the affadavit, is a state committee man and attorney. He would be fully aware of the penalties for swearing out a false affadavit, and I find it hard to credit that he would do so. After all, the business about Oganowski being short on signatures didn’t come to light until just recently. I am perfectly willing to believe that somebody forged his name, and it will be interesting to see if the clerk’s office can determine who dropped off the sheet.
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p>To a certain extent, this may be moot as it appears Oganowski didn’t get enough signatures anyway.
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p>And full disclosure – I happen to be backing Jeff Beatty in the primary, but I also signed Oganowski’s papers and would have supported him were he the nominee – I told him so.
a campaign person collects up signature pages from several volunteers. in such a case, the chain of custody is broken from the start and there would be no direct way to determine who signed on behalf of the recent deceased from the district. i’m sure this is not a new problem. i wonder why it has never been remedied by requiring the signature gatherers to identify themselves on each sheet they turn in.
I mean, who isn’t tempted to play funny games with the opposition’s papers? Who hasn’t mused on the idea of being deep undercover in a campaign, then launching a torpedo in October? I’d love to sign up at GOP headquarters, then go door to door explaining to people that we need to elect Republicans because the rich are better than us, and high gas prices are a pittance to pay for the comfort of Big Oil. I won’t, but the idea does amuse me.
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p>Considering the heat of politics, in some ways it’s surprising that trust is still so much a part of the process.
I mean it’s difficult to ask a candidate to be responsible for every single person that walks up and signs, but isn’t a candidate ultimately responsible in the end? We’ll see how this plays out.
Maybe Ogonowski should have required that each signer present a photo ID which could be verified against the signature? Isn’t that a big Republican thing — preventing voter fraud and all?
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p>Or would that just result in fewer people signing … or voting?
Ogonowski has a blog (who knew). He has a posting about him delivering the signatures, including pictures of him waling up to town hall with signatures in hand and the other in the clerk’s office.
while I was there I checked his web site. Still no “Issues” link to be found.
The NRCC hasn’t told him yet what his positions are.
NRCC was last year.
It’s scarily bad, but even that’s a rip-off of the Bush flip flop ad. It’s like Ogo has no ideas at all. Can he really be running solely on not being John Kerry? Seems like a low bar.
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p>Oh wait, there is a pro-Lester statement in the news section. Very brave. And the mailer I got yesterday says he’s going to fix the state’s immigration problem. Good thing. I’m sick of going into Starbucks and hearing nothing but Irish accents. đŸ˜‰
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p>Sad, really.
The Ogo campaign waited until the last day they could to deliver over 20,000 signatures.
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p>This left no time to recognize that there was a problem. And left no time to fix the problem.
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p>Do campaigns normally submit signatures like that or do most submit them on a rolling basis?
Do we need to do something to fix this process? Is it too many signatures for a volunteer-based gathering method? Personally, I prefer volunteer gatherers to paid gatherers, because I think there’s far more room for trickery when that happens (as seen on the anti-equality signature collection). However, I’m completely open to suggestion, because this is the second time during this campaign cycle that it’s come up… and more than that over the past few years.
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p>However, all in all, this is great news for John Kerry. Ogonowski – I was afraid of? Beatty? No way. Heck, the guy wasted money on a robocall to my house, a house in which has never voted Republican in a primary for as long as I’ve lived in it. That suggests there’s not much reason to have confidence in the Beatty’s campaign to actually run a real campaign. That said, at least they were able to hand in enough signatures…
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p>Was it to go to an event. Maybe his new Communications Director, former Deval Patrick Communications Director, Khalil Byrd used one of his old lists? đŸ˜‰
it was a fundraiser.
I have to say that Ogo showed up at a town meeting several months ago with his nomination papers. I told him I was a registered Democrat. He still asked me to sign his papers. I hear he is 92 signatures short of the 10,000 needed. Maybe he should have gone for registered Republicans which would have counted for him.