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Law360 (April 17, 2020, 5:00 PM EDT) -- Political candidates seeking to get on to the Sept. 1 primary ballot in Massachusetts will only need to collect half the number of signatures usually required and can now use some electronic means to gather names, according to a decision Friday from the state's high court.
In its opinion easing ballot access restrictions, the Supreme Judicial Court also extended the filing deadlines for district and county races from Feb. 28 to May 5 and June 5, respectively, aligning the due dates for signatures with those of federal and statewide offices.
The opinion — written by Chief Justice Ralph D. Gants and released less than 24 hours after oral arguments in the case — said the spread of the novel coronavirus has transformed the state's long-standing policy on signatures into an "unconstitutionally severe burden" on candidates' fundamental rights.
"If a candidate seeks to obtain signatures on nomination papers in the traditional ways, he or she reasonably may fear that doing so might risk the health and safety not only of the person requesting the signature but also of the persons who are signing, of the families with whom they live and potentially of their entire community," Justice Gants said.
"The minimum signature requirements, therefore, in this time of pandemic are unconstitutional as applied to the plaintiffs, and other similarly situated candidates," he added.
The court also approved a plan to let office seekers collect signatures electronically by allowing voters to download the nomination papers, sign with a mouse or stylus, or print a hard copy and sign it by hand. The form can be mailed back to the campaign or scanned and emailed, the court said.
The high court had hoped it wouldn't have to craft a specific policy fix to the issue. Two bills remain pending in the Massachusetts Legislature, but neither had advanced as of Friday, and time is running short for candidates.
"We recognize, though, that where these extraordinary circumstances require us to make policy judgments that, in ordinary times would be best left to the Legislature, our remedy must be 'no more intrusive than it ought reasonably be to ensure the accomplishment of the legally justified result,'" the court said.
The candidates behind the petition are Robert Goldstein, running to be the Democratic Party's nominee for the office of U.S. representative for the Eighth District; Kevin O'Connor, running to be the Republican Party's nominee for the U.S. Senate; and Melissa Bower Smith, running to be the Democratic nominee for her state representative district.
With the ruling cutting requirements in half, Goldstein now needs to collect 1,000 signatures, O'Connor needs 5,000 and Bower Smith needs 75.
O'Connor said the decision marks a "great day for democracy, public health and constitutional principles" but the path forward is far from certain because there's no precedent for how mailed-in or electronic signatures will hold up to challenges by other campaigns.
"These are completely uncharted waters," O'Connor told Law360. "There is no track record or any model we can rely upon to help us predict the reliability of the petitions that have been returned to us by mail. There isn't a model we can rely upon to help us assess the reliability of electronic signatures."
The court rejected the approach put forward by Secretary of State William Galvin, which mirrored one of the legislative proposals in that it lowered the requirements only for offices requiring more than 1,000 signatures. Notably, that threshold would have denied relief to anyone running for state representative or state senator.
Instead, the court found it more "equitable" to lower the requirements for all primary candidates.
Representatives for the other two candidates and Secretary of State William Galvin were not immediately available for comment Friday.
Galvin is represented by Anne Sterman of the Massachusetts attorney general's office.
The petitioners are represented by Robert Jones of Ropes & Gray LLP.
The case is Goldstein et al. v. Galvin, case number SJC-12931, in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.
--Editing by Stephen Berg.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
