Sentinel & Enterprise

Brady cleared for congressio­nal ballot

- By Chris Lisinski

Republican candidate Helen Brady will challenge U.S. Rep. Bill Keating this fall after all.

The state’s highest court ruled Monday that Brady is eligible for the ballot, overturnin­g a decision from the State Ballot Law Commission that blocked her access based on how her campaign collected and submitted electronic nomination signatures.

Three days after hearing arguments in the case, the Supreme Judicial Court ordered Secretary of State William Galvin to print Brady’s name on the Sept. 1 Republican primary election ballot. Last month, following a complaint by registered Ninth Congressio­nal District voter Leon Arthur Brathwaite II, the SBLC deemed Brady ineligible to run because a third-party vendor her campaign used to collect electronic signatures stored them in a separate file and then imported them into the final nomination paper document.

The commission ruled that process violated a requiremen­t in an SJC decision outlining e-signature use that campaigns had to submit “native” documents onto which voters directly affixed their signatures.

However, the SJC disagreed with that interpreta­tion of its own ruling.

In a brief two-page order, the court said that the process Brady used “complied in substance with the material requiremen­ts” of the so-called Goldstein ruling. A lengthier opinion outlining justices’ reasoning for vacating the SBLC decision was not available Monday.

Brady could not be reached for immediate comment on the decision Monday afternoon. It’s the third straight election cycle that she’s running — former Rep. Cory Atkins of Concord defeated Brady in 2016 and in 2018 Brady lost her statewide race to Auditor Suzanne Bump.

Her attorney, Christophe­r Kenney, had argued that blocking her from the ballot on the technical point would have violated her equal protection constituti­onal rights, noting that 39 other candidates — including several who qualified for the ballot — used the same company to collect signatures but did not face any consequenc­es because their eligibilit­y was not challenged.

 ?? Chris christo / Boston herald ?? helen Br dy t the 2018 republic n st te convention.
Chris christo / Boston herald helen Br dy t the 2018 republic n st te convention.

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