Dead Signatures and Copied Signatures Haunt Massachusetts GOP Lieutenant Governor Bid

By Katie Castellani

Allegations of signatures from dead people and a mysterious list of voters were featured in hours of testimony on a case that will determine whether a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor secures ballot access.

On Monday, the State Ballot Law Commission concluded its hearing on complaints that Anne Manning Martin had filed hundreds of fraudulent nomination signatures and did not get the necessary 10,000 certified signatures to have her name printed on September’s primary ballot. The complaints came from Democratic Party Executive Director Adam Roof and Manning Martin’s challenger for the party’s lieutenant governor nomination, Shawn Oliver. The commission consolidated the two complaints and heard them as one.

A critical piece of the legal argument presented against Manning Martin was that Joe Bronske – who she hired to collect signatures – had retrieved a list of voters from a database that the Republican Party manages and used those names to forge signatures.

Anne Brensley, who also hired Bronske to collect signatures and blamed him for not gathering enough to enable her to appear on the primary ballot, testified that she had reviewed a list of signatures submitted on her behalf and quickly noticed something was off: there were names of people who had died before their signatures were allegedly collected.

Brensley shared this after Manning Martin’s attorney and sister, Mary Ellen Manning, pressed her on the possibility of signatures being collected before Bronske had allegedly retrieved the voter list.

“Somebody died in 2023, their name and signature is on the signature sheet. How is that possible under what you’re asked right now?” Brensley retorted.

Manning contended that the list itself was not presented as evidence. Also, she said a file which Dan Winslow, Oliver’s attorney, referred to as the list didn’t meet “evidentiary standards” and could have been edited by multiple people. 

Further, Manning said Brensley “cooked up” the list in question and sent it around to bring attention to other candidates because she didn’t make it onto the ballot and “was going to make sure nobody else did either.” Manning’s accusation was stricken from the record in response to Winslow’s objection.

“It is very important that we handle this appropriately Your Honor, because everything in this case is going to hinge on how we treat this file,” Manning said earlier in the hearing. 

When the issue came up again in the hearing, Winslow said that the names could have come from any list and that the point was that signatures were copied onto multiple candidates’ nomination papers from the same source.

“It could be a phone book. Whatever they were using, Your Honor, they were copying names from some list on the nomination papers and the errors that occurred on the list were identical errors in both candidacies,” Winslow said. “So, we don’t really care what the list said, it’s just the fact that the order is implausible for anything other than fraud.”

Brensley said that she compared the list in question with names on her nomination papers, finding signatures on both documents were set in the exact same order. Brensley added that the signatures, and the order they appeared, were also identical on some of Manning Martin’s nomination papers that she reviewed.

Similarly, Harold Hubschman, founder and president of the prominent signature collecting firm SignatureDrive.com, testified that he reviewed nomination papers from both Manning Martin and Michael Walsh, a Republican candidate for attorney general who also hired Bronske, and noticed more than 650 signatures appeared identically and in the exact same order.

“It is not possible for that to happen naturally,” Hubschman said, noting that signature gatherers will often collect signatures for multiple campaigns at once, but it’s unlikely for hundreds to appear in identical order on multiple candidates’ nomination papers.

Hubschman also testified that the validity rate – the number of signatures collected that were deemed to come from actual voters – on a portion of Manning Martin’s nomination papers was 94%, which he said is “highly suspect.” It’s very rare to exceed a 90% validity rate, Hubschman said.

“I have an opinion, these are categorically, without any doubt on my part, fraudulent signatures,” Hubschman said before Manning cut him off with a motion to strike his comment from the record. That motion was overruled.

“If I saw this show up in one of our campaigns, we would immediately not submit them anywhere. We would pull every signature that this petition had done for us out of our turn-ins and I would immediately notify the secretary of state’s office about this petition,” Hubschman continued before Manning lodged another ill-fated motion to strike his comment from the record.

Eileen Page, who Winslow called to testify as a handwriting expert, said she reviewed Manning Martin’s nomination papers and determined more than 700 signatures were likely forged.

Manning argued that Page departed from her usual practice by not comparing each and every signature she challenged as forgery with handwriting samples from that signer. Page said this was an unusual case and she relied on cross references to validate repetitive handwriting traits that had raised red flags in the nomination papers.

Manning said she was planning to call a handwriting expert as a witness, but changed her mind “in the interest of economy.”

Before calling witnesses, Manning presented motions seeking to dismiss the case. One was based on the fact that John Corrigan, an attorney for the Democrats, had not presented any of his own evidence, any witnesses or asked any questions for the consolidated case. Manning also argued the objectors’ case should be dismissed because they did not present any “substantial evidence” like voters whose signatures were allegedly forged. None of the motions to dismiss the case were granted.

Manning introduced several witnesses, including those who said their signatures – and the ones they collected – for Manning Martin were valid. She also called Mark Steffen, who said he’s worked in the Republican’s voter database, as a witness. Steffen said it’s possible to go into the Republican’s voter database and edit files. He also said it behooves signature gatherers to keep a spreadsheet with signatures listed in a certain order so they can check their work.

Noticeably absent from the hearing was Bronske. Winslow said that Bronske was deposed and invoked his Fifth Amendment right in response to all questions surrounding whether he forged signatures and copied from a Republican voter list. Bronske said he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right if he were called to testify, according to Winslow. 

The commission faces a Friday deadline to render a decision on the case and is set to continue its hearing on a similar complaint lodged against Walsh on Tuesday afternoon.