Katie Castellani
State House News Service
Michael Walsh, a Republican candidate for attorney general, has filed another appeal of the State Ballot Law Commission ruling that knocked him off the primary ballot over allegedly fraudulent signatures – this time with the U.S. Supreme Court.
On Tuesday, Walsh appealed the commission's decision in Superior Court. And on June 18, Walsh filed an emergency motion with the Supreme Judicial Court for Suffolk County seeking immediate judicial relief to a single justice on the case. Walsh's filing is under advisement, according to the SJC's website.
Walsh told the News Service that he sent an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court via FedEx on Tuesday and sent it electronically on Wednesday morning. He said the appeal does not have a docket number yet and a cover letter attached to it was addressed to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Walsh's filing, with the nation's highest court, which the News Service obtained from Secretary of State William Galvin's office, seeks an immediate stay of the commission's decision as well as the proceedings in Massachusetts' Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court has jurisdiction on almost any case involving constitutional or federal law and can decide whether or not to hear an appeal. The court agrees to hear around 100 to 150 of the more than 7,000 cases it is asked to review annually, according to the U.S. courts' website.
In the latest appeal, Walsh argued that the First Amendment right to association was injured and that harm is "irreparable." That's because the commission allowed a Democrat to challenge the candidate's nomination even though they're from different political parties.
"The application presents a straightforward First Amendment injury. The Massachusetts State Ballot Law Commission has permitted officers of the Democratic Party to invoke a ballot-objection statute to displace, delay, or cloud the Republican Party’s chosen nomination," Walsh said in the appeal. "That is not ordinary ballot administration. It is state-enabled rival-party interference in the core associational function of a political party—selecting the standard-bearer through whom the party speaks to voters."
Massachusetts Democratic Party Executive Director Adam Roof filed a complaint alleging Walsh had allegedly submitted hundreds of fraudulent nomination papers, contending the candidate did not have the required 10,000 certified signatures to get on the ballot.
"A rival party's officers have no associational stake in the Republican Party's nomination. Their asserted interest is not to participate in the Republican association, but to defeat or destabilize it. By interpreting the objection statute to confer standing on Democratic Party officers to challenge a Republican nomination, the State Ballot Law Commission transformed a ballot-integrity mechanism into a weapon for partisan intrusion," Walsh said. "That construction burdens the Republican Party in precisely the way the First Amendment forbids: it subjects the party's internal choice of nominee to adversarial control by political opponents."
The commission agreed with signature fraud complainants on Friday by sustaining their objections to 1,021 of Walsh's 10,677 signatures and declaring that he does not have the required 10,000 signatures needed to have his name printed on the Republican primary ballot.
The primary election is set for Sept. 1 and Galvin's office must mail ballots by July 18, unless that deadline is waived.