Anne Brensley called the fallout over lieutenant gov’s race the “largest electoral fraud scandal” in Mass history. It’s not even the biggest one this year.
You can’t have a Massachusetts Republican lieutenant governor’s race without conspiracy theories playing front and center.
Four years ago, one of the candidates for the position was a nurse and utter nutter strumming a one-issue guitar against the COVID vaccine. This time around, the LG hopeful claims that her campaign has fallen victim to a “systematic” and “unprecedented fraud scheme.”
As MassLive and others reported: “Republican lieutenant governor candidate Anne Brensley has failed to collect enough signatures to make the fall ballot. Brensley’s campaign manager blamed the signature shortfall on a consultant she had hired to help her gather the 10,000 signatures she needed to get on the fall ballot.”
At the recent MassGOP convention, Brensley, a Wayland selectwoman and real estate executive, won the official party endorsement for lieutenant governor. But last week, she submitted only 4,058 certified signatures to the secretary of state’s office, leaving her thousands of names short of the mandatory threshold. The consultant in question, Joe Bronske, reportedly claimed via email that he had collected over 6,200 names, but he actually produced fewer than 1,000. More than one local town clerk flagged his papers to the state’s election division due to significant forgery concerns.
The ‘largest electoral fraud’
As a candidate for the state’s penultimate high office, Brensley didn’t seem especially offensive—not even to Massachusetts liberals. She’s for more local cooperation with ICE and essentially running to oppose the MBTA Communities Act and stop lawful residential building in towns that desperately need new housing. It’s all standard semi-toxic conservative slop with “parental rights” nonsense sprinkled on top, but apparently it is enough to motivate the deep state into action.
The following comes from the campaign, which is calling this the “largest electoral fraud scandal in Massachusetts history.” Nevermind that the word “gerrymander” literally comes from here, or that a former speaker of the House was imprisoned for lying about redistricting, here is what the GOP stooges are claiming …
“Anne Brensley … is taking legal action against a republican insider … The campaign concludes it has been systematically misled while continuing to make payments based on false reporting. Instead of a legitimate statewide signature operation, the campaign fears it has been the victim of an unprecedented fraud scheme involving forged nomination papers and fabricated progress reports.”
A much bigger electoral fraud scandal—from this year
While the MassGOP is reeling from an amateurish contractor who seems to have forged a few hundred names and left a statewide candidate stranded, a dive into professional prohibitionist signature operations shows what truly high-level ballot deception looks like.
Reporting by Talking Joints Memo has detailed the unsavory tactics of the Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts, a dark-money-funded group pushing a ballot initiative to effectively shut down recreational cannabis dispensaries. The main proponent and multiple original petition signers listed on the anti-cannabis proposal are district committee members of the state Republican party (MassGOP). The proponent, Caroline Cunningham, also served as a general consultant for the campaign against Question 4, to legalize and regulate psychedelics in Mass, which went down in flames last year.
To get their measure on the ballot, the Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts paid more than $1.4 million to a Missouri-based political vendor called GroundGame Political Solutions. Along with pro-legalization groups, we have challenged the validity of the resulting anti-pot petitions. In some cases, signature collectors told people they were signing for another measure altogether; in others, they lied about the nature of the repeal, making claims including that the form was to keep fentanyl away from children. A survey found that more than half of the signatories said they were entirely misled by the signature gatherers and would never have signed if they knew the actual intent was to close down local businesses.
Additionally, Talking Joints Memo highlighted GroundGame’s alarming track record of unscrupulous election practices across the country. During a 2024 operation in Rhode Island, they were caught submitting an unusually high volume of fraudulent signatures. An internal investigation later revealed that a staffer was intentionally writing down the names of dead people on the state’s nomination papers. And in Michigan, the same firm was accused of political sabotage after buying out a signature-gathering contract for a ballot initiative, only to intentionally sit on the papers and not collect names because their actual primary client opposed the measure.
Still trying to get on the ballot
Brensley has petitioned the secretary of state for a two-week extension to make up for the deficit. State election officials, however, have noted that they lack the authority to alter such deadlines. In the meantime, Brensley announced that she will launch a write-in campaign. All while crying foul because her local contractor pulled a cheap scam, forged some names, and apparently screwed them.
Whether she gets another crack at collecting the qualifying signatures or goes the write-in way, if the candidate needs a firm that truly knows how to aggressively push the boundaries of ballot manipulation, she should hire the group that pulled so many stunts for the repeal squad. At least they lied effectively enough to get their client on the ballot.
