Before its Massachusetts controversy, the Missouri-based GroundGame Political Solutions was accused of shenanigans in Rhode Island and Michigan
For several months, there has been an avalanche of outrage from Mass cannabis proponents over tactics that were used by a group that’s attempting to close commonwealth pot shops. I am among those who are angry; by my own account, I’m basically the one who sounded the alarm about the actions of their signature collectors.
As has since been reported by virtually every news outlet in the state and many national publications as well, nobody who is involved with the so-called Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts is able to tell anything close to the truth. Here’s a quick recap …
- Their signature gatherers lied to voters all across the state, in many cases telling signers that they were putting their name on a completely different referendum.
- Then, when they were called out for it, the Mass Republicans behind the repeal effort blamed the people who may have signed something that they didn’t entirely read.
- This week, it finally came out that despite the campaign’s claims to represent a broad coalition of families and concerned citizens, its sole donor is an out-of-state dark money group.
As for how they’re spending that dark money, we are learning more about the move to repeal and the operators behind it—including about the outfit behind the signature collecting.
Between September and November 2025, the Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts paid the Missouri-based GroundGame Political Solutions more than $1.4 million for its services, the lion’s share of the $1.55 million it received from SAM Action Inc., a Virginia-based anti-pot propaganda apparatus.
It’s not the first time that GroundGame has been linked to allegedly unscrupulous election practices. In Michigan, the company reportedly sabotaged a ballot initiative by buying out a contract to collect signatures for a referendum its client didn’t really support and then not doing the job. While in our neighboring Ocean State, reports of “an unusually high number of signatures” for 2024 Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy led back to the Missouri company.
As the Rhode Island Current reported in 2024: “The vendor, a Missouri-based company called GroundGame Political Solutions LLC, launched an internal investigation of its staffers, which found one person who was intentionally writing down dead people’s names on signature forms. That person, who was not identified, was fired … and the company has notified Warwick Police.”
None of those past problems seemingly mattered to the obscure Massachusetts Ballot Law Commission, which finally issued its ruling on an objection to the way in which prohibitionists cleared the first signature hurdle. In short, the body rejected the complaint filed by the pro-legalization Committee to Protect Cannabis Regulation, effectively greenlighting the ballot measure, officially (and ridiculously) dubbed an Act to Restore a Sensible Marijuana Policy.
Meanwhile, a survey commissioned by the Committee to Protect Cannabis Regulation found that of more than 2,300 people who signed the petition, more than half said they wouldn’t have lent their name to the effort if they actually knew the intent of the measure—to shut down adult-use dispensaries.
A spokesperson for the repeal side lied to the Boston Globe: “We never intended or encouraged or in any way made signature gatherers feel like they should lie about what they were getting signed. … You’ve got crybabies who are making millions of dollars off of this marijuana business who are complaining that they’re not being treated fairly. And in fact, they are.”
