On June 3, Jim Ogonowski, the choice of leaders of the Massachusetts Republican Party for U.S. Senate this year, was told by the Secretary of State that he does not have enough valid signatures to be on the Republican primary ballot. The law requires 10,000 signatures, and Ogonowski has 9,970, according to the Secretary of State. Ogonowski disputes this and says some of his signatures were lost by town clerks. He is also free to run as a write-in candidate in the September primary. However, he would need 10,000 write-in votes, and in addition, of course, he would need to outpoll the one Republican who did get on the primary ballot. That candidate is Jeff Beatty. Beatty doesn’t have as much support among party leaders, but he did a better job of collecting signatures.

I wrote to every Republican state legislator in Massachusetts in early 2007, and urged each one to introduce a bill, making ballot access to the primary ballot easier. None of them responded. The Republican Party only had U.S. House candidates in 2006 in three of the ten districts. The Green Party, which was also a ballot-qualified party in 2006 (and still is) didn’t have any U.S. House candidates in 2006, and doesn’t this year either.