The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that Secretary of State Bill Galvin did nothing wrong in accusing online investment firm Robinhood of giving bad investment advice to the online poor to enrich itself. Read more.
Maura Healey will take on Geoff Diehl, the 2020-skeptical favorite of the Short-Fingered Vulgarian of Mar-a-Lago, who defeated another Republican who was willing to allow that Biden actually won. Read more.
Update: Group dropped the suit.
A group trying to summon a constitutional convention to impose limits on the federal government says Massachusetts Secretary of State Bill Galvin has some nerve asking it hand over the names and addresses of anybody in the country who's contributed more than $15 when it's spent only $1,624 in possible lobbying activities in this bluest of states. Read more.
Repeat Senate loser Shiva Ayyadurai tonight dropped his lawsuit against the Massachusetts Secretary of State's office, just one day after he'd filed a new complaint alleging that that office and Twitter were part of a ruthless global conspiracy out to destroy him and deprive all Americans of their free-speech rights. Read more.
WFXT reports Massachusetts Secretary of State Bill Galvin will file legislation to make last year's Covid-19-related mail-in voting permanent and to let voters register to vote or change their addresses at their polling places on Election Day.
WBZ interviews Secretary of State Bill Galvin, who says you can bring your own pen with which to vote tomorrow if you're worried about coronavirus (since nobody seems to care that there have been thousands more flu cases in the state so far). Just don't bring red - the scanners can't read that color.
The Herald reports on Zakim's 55-45 margin, but doesn't mention Marty Walsh's role in convincing Boston delegates to go with the city councilor rather than the incumbent from Brighton. Both Zakim and Galvin will be on the September ballot.
CommonWealth Magazine reports on a call by Bill Galvin, Secretary of State and Man about Brighton, to the mayor of Lawrence, who's backing Josh Zakim's bid to unseat him. It did not go well.
The Brighton Marine Health Center says it's going to build 108 units of housing on its campus because helping veterans get a place to live is more important than assuaging the Secretary of State of the Commonwealth.
At issue are several structures on the campus that the health center wants to raze to make way for the apartments. Read more.
The Globe reports Secretary of State and Brighton resident Bill Galvin has managed to block construction of an apartment complex for veterans because it would mean demolishing some old buildings that neither the Boston Landmarks Commission nor the Brighton-Allston Historical Society say are important enough to save - especially since there are numerous clones of the buildings across the Northeast.
The Boston Business Journal reports that Secretary of State Bill Galvin will ask for legislation requiring state agencies to withdraw all their money from banks that continue to try to find new ways to charge residents for access to their own money, such, as oh, Bank of America.
At the end of an interesting look at the life of a Massachusetts poll worker in a presidential primary, Mike Ball reports:
Another oddment that voters don’t know yet is that the September primary election will almost certainly not be on the logical second Tuesday. Because Labor Day is the previous week and many travel before or even during that time, the second Tuesday is the normal one. However, this year, it would be 9/11, a date fraught with history and emotion.
Mike Ball reports on Jim Henderson's press conference outside Suffolk Law School. Who he? He's the independent running against Bill Galvin, who didn't want to see his shadow and participate in a forum at the school. OK, OK, Galvin tells the Globe because he couldn't take 90 minutes out of his busy day for a debate.
That's one possible explanation for why the Prince of Darkness refuses to debate his opponents.
Speaking of debates, Frank and Bielat debate at 3 p.m. today on WBUR. You can submit questions.
Mike Ball reports on a rare live public appearance by Secretary of State for Life Bill Galvin.
Hey, West Roxbury and Jamaica Plain peeps: Today's the very special preliminary election for city council, so go vote.
David Bernstein reports on the Dorchester state rep's dreams of statewide office - which assume AG Martha Coakley gets elected US senator and incumbent Secretary of State Bill Galvin runs for her job.
The Globe reports Secretary of State Bill Galvin, in charge of public-records enforcement, ordered the city of Boston to immediately secure its e-mail servers and hire a computer forensics expert to try to recover e-mail the mayor said today disappeared in a "glitch," but which opponents charge is evidence of a coverup of something.
DJDiva is annoyed that the Secretary of State's online form for getting a voter registration form (you can't actually register online) uses the <blink> tag (note: You can only see it in operation with Firefox or, gasp, Netscape; it doesn't do anything in IE):
UGH why why why why? ... Granted they wanted to make it clear that my voter registration update wouldn't be final until I mail in the form. But instead of the irritating blink tag taking away my attention from the action I'm trying to perform, why not use a different color text, like red to call my attention, make the text bold (they did that), and make it a slightly larger font size? ...
This is nice: The Red Sox have gotten $13.6 million in state tax credits to refurbish Fenway Park and surrounding buildings and plan to ask for $26 million more.
Bruce Mohl reports the news in a CommonWealth article (free registration required) on the Prince of Darkness himself, Secretary of State Bill Galvin.
Seems Galvin - the man who is supposed to help citizens gain access to public records - does his best to keep secret the recipients of a $50-million annual historic-preservation tax-credit fund he oversees:
It took nearly two months to obtain a complete list of the tax credit awards, and then only after filing a public records request for the information. Although Galvin's office urges government officials to waive any fees associated with providing access to public records, Galvin's staff charged CommonWealth close to $300 just to look at four tax credit applications.
Via Rick Holmes.
OK, so Secretary of State Bill Galvin vows to take over the Boston elections department because of that ballot-shortage issue the other night. Andy at Mass. Revolution Now wonders where the Dark Prince was before the election - when Boston was already under federal investigation on various election issues:
... Bill Galvin has been in charge of voting supervision in this state for something like 12 years and only now is he going to get serious about looking out for voters?
So what does anyone think we can expect from Billy? Well his latest idea has been bringing in the electronic disaster machines manufactured by Diebold. I feel so safe having Billy on the job now. ...
Actually, this isn't the first time Galvin has yelled at Boston elections officials, and Tuesday's ballot shortage might just be the proverbial straw.
The Globe's Political Intelligence reports that Galvin "issued a scathing report" on the city's election performance back in 2003. And you'll recall the whole Dianne Wilkerson/Sonia Chang-Diaz mess, in which the city elections department failed to even count any votes in several precincts this past September.
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