Deadline Today For Minor Party Signatures

Today at 5:00PM was the deadline for independent and minor party candidates to submit their signature petitions to town and city clerks to be checked against the local voter rolls and certified. There are (at least) two candidates this year who are affected by this deadline.

Christy Mihos and lieutenant governor candidate John Sullivan likely will have the signatures needed to get on the ballot, having paid Spoonworks Inc. a total of $85,000. Fellow gubernatorial candidate Chris Gabrieli paid Spoonworks $82,500 in May, and the state Republican party paid them around $70,000 for a number of their candidates.

Grace Ross of the Green-Rainbow party, however, does not have the luxury of paying for signatures. Last week, the party sounded the alarm as they feared they would come up short. Now, according to Ross, the Greens have already had 3,760 signatures certified by town clerks and as of yesterday they planned to submit an additional 9,400 by today's deadline. I don't know if they made their target, but even if they did, they would still require about 2/3 of those 9,400 signatures to be certified. That's not impossible, but it's certainly cutting it close. If they fell short of their goal or if too many of those signatures are invalid, the Green Party will not have a candidate for governor on the ballot.