On May 22, a Massachusetts trial court determined that the City Clerk of Quincy improperly invalidated many signatures on a local initiative. The judge ordered the petition to be re-checked, and this time, even if a signature is illegible, to try to validate the signature by using the voter’s printed name instead. As in almost all jurisdictions, Massachusetts initiative petitions have one column for the voter’s signature, and another column for that voter’s printed name. Perdios v City of Quincy, Norfolk Superior Court, 2582cv-01130.
When the petition had first been checked, the city election employees only looked at the signature column, and ignored the column that contains printed names.
Duopoly incumbents hate being held accountable by constituents.
It’s not accountability. That comes in the form of elections.
It’s a lot more like smelling what would happen if all your neighbours had to fix their on toilets, regardless of how bad they might be at it or whether they want to or not, instead of hiring a professional.
Or having to share the road with them if they all had to do all their own car repairs, again regardless of how bad they might be at it or whether they want to or not, instead of hiring a professional.
Their own toilets, in case that was unclear to anyone
Stanley, yep.
Also, they encouraged petition fraud with this ruling.
If names and addresses match voters, but signatures don’t, it’s likely to be a forgery.
That’s why signatures are required.
Because you know I’m all about that Trump, ’bout that Trump , no Biden
I’m all about that Trump , ’bout that Trump , no Harris
I’m all about that Trump , ’bout that Trump , no commies
I’m all about that Trump, ’bout that Trump (Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump)
WhitePrideWorldWide on May 22, 2026 at 3:39 pm said:
Actually funny:
https://youtu.be/hV7ILb8-aTQ
If u don’t laugh u = libtard !!!
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POST THIS EVERYWHERE YOU CAN !!!
https://notthebee.com/article/patriots-come-meet-the-all-native-american-ice-troop-the-shadow-wolves
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Massachusetts uses a state-provided system for checking petitions, including those for an individual city or town such as Quincy. In Massachusetts, the legal standard is if there is a registered voter with a particular name at that address it counts as valid. There apparently is no signature matching, and the address is intrinsically required.
State regulations say to count signatures where a middle initial has been inserted/omitted on the petition, or a Jr. or Sr. has been used, or if the name is printed in the signature column. Note that state initiative petitions do not have a printed name column, but there is not a standard form for municipal initiatives. The Quincy circulators thought it would be a good idea to have one in case the signature was illegible.
The clerk enters an address and the system returns a list of registrants at the name. If the signature looks like “Squiggly Mhz;nk” the clerk might conclude looks close enough to Shelley Martin and count it. But some addresses for apartment buildings might have 50 or more registrants. The clerk could not find a match.
The clerks had originally disallowed around 1800 out of a total of over 7000 signatures. When the plaintiffs and the clerk had reviewed the petitions checking the printed name they agreed on this number, thus there was no fact dispute, and the judge was ruling on constitutional grounds, which he referenced liberally in his decision. The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was authored in 1779 by a Quincy resident, John Adams. The Massachusetts constitution predates the US Constitution by eight years. Adams was minister to Great Britain in 1787, but had written an influential treatise on government focusing on separation of powers and a strong executive independent of the legislature.
The initiative was in response to a 79% pay raise for the mayor of Quincy that would have given him a higher salary than the mayors of New York City, Los Angeles, Houston, or Boston. The pay raise was passed in 2024 and opponents had failed to get a referendum on the ballot that year, but the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission had ruled that they could not take effect under a Massachusetts law that prevents municipal employees from participating in financial matters in which they hold an immediate direct financial interest. The 2025 initiative was to amend the city charter. After the clerk rejected the petition, the petitioners failed to get an injunction to have the measure placed on the November 2025 ballot.
But at the November 2025 election, the incumbent mayor and five city councilmen were ousted. The new city council is considering repealing the 2024 ordinance, or perhaps the 2025 charter initiative will now be voted.
The town clerks check first, and at least back when I was in the business many if not all of them did in fact check and compared signatures.
The state check was (and as far as I know still is) secondary, after signatures are checked at town clerk’s, then collected back and submitted to the state.
@Fp,
This is the court’s decision. It describes the process used in Massachusetts.
https://perma.cc/38X3-PHNP
This was an initiative for the city of Quincy, so there was no statewide check.
At one time registration records were maintained in each city and town. Over time this has shifted to the state due to federal law, online registration, etc. When motor voter laws first became effective, the DMV would let a voter fill out a paper registration card, and would then deliver it to the appropriate town (unless a custodian had dumped the box of registration cards). Over time this has evolved to a statewide electronic system. Quincy might not actually maintain any registration records.
Instead election officials use a VRIS terminal to access the statewide data base. For statewide petitions, the state prescribes the forms (after all these may be delivered to each city/town for certifying before being turned into the state. The statewide form has columns for an address and a signature. State law requires that the signer be registered at the address, and those two columns are all that is needed.
There is no prescribed form for local petitions. The one in Quincy had:
1. #
2. Name
3. Address
4. Signature
5. Ward
6. Precinct
(I can’t tell from the court decision whether there was an expectation of the ward and precinct being completed. A ward might be useful for a city council elected by wards).
But a signer is likely to take more care in printing their name and address, and scrawling a signature to attest to your agreement with the petition rather than identify yourself which you already did.
The decision gave some examples. On one the signature looked like “Dolan” and there was a voter with the last name of Dolan at that address, and perhaps you could then check that the first name is plausible from the signature. But at another address there were over 50 persons registered at an apartment building. The clerk thought the first and last letters looked like K and R. But there were three voters with those initials. The signature was marked as illegible because the clerk could not discern who had signed the petition.
The election officials in Quincy processed 7200 signatures in 20 clerk-hours. That is 10 seconds per signature, not really time to trundle over to a file cabinet and pull out a dusty record from 30 years ago, especially when the clerk screams, “eww! this one had mold/grape jelly/bugs!”
The clerks in Quincy were instructed to ignore the name column. This is not entirely illogical, since on a statewide petition there is not a column for a printed name. State law may be discriminatory if it makes it difficult for persons who live in apartment buildings to sign in petitions. It may be age-discriminatory as well. Older voters have perfect penmanship; middle-aged voters scrawl; and younger voters only know how to type with their thumbs and might not be able to use a pen.
Thanks. That’s more than I want to read. I would if I was still in the business. Not so much now. I thought all New England states continue to use the town clerk system, even on statewides, which if I’m not mistaken is unique to that region.
Some states sort everything by county. In New England, at least back when I was in the business, it was towns . Usually or always (I forget) with pickup from towns and a second state check after.
That’s not so bad in Rhode Island, but really tough in Maine, especially northern Maine. I think they have over 400 towns iirc in a low population state and much of what population there is , is concentrated, leaving vast areas of many tiny towns far from each other and frequently town clerks working irregular hours, not answering phone or email, not returning snail mail, etc.
There I got long winded too. But you probably didn’t spend decades bouncing around the country. Dealing with apathetic public, hostile locations, opposition, friendly and unfriendly competition, shady contractors above and below, ignorant security and law enforcement, dishonest clients, all sorts of weather while trying to stop strangers when they don’t have to, and all the rest of the crazy crap that comes with that business and the temptations and bad habits of life on the road.