Press conference held outside Boston City Hall on deadline day to announce collection of 100,000 signatures in effort to guarantee voters will make final decision on whether illegal immigrants should be entitled with state-issued driver’s licenses.
Aug. 24, 2022
BOSTON — Massachusetts Republican Party Chairman Jim Lyons appeared alongside volunteers and candidates outside City Hall on Wednesday to congratulate members of a grassroots campaign that managed to secure over 100,000 signatures in an effort to put the question of whether illegal immigrants should be entitled to driver’s licenses on the ballot
The Fair and Secure Massachusetts campaign, launched after Democrats overrode GOP Gov. Charlie Baker’s veto of their new driver’s licenses for illegals law, collected more than twice the amount required under state law to trigger a ballot referendum.
“What we’re seeing today is the culmination of an effort of volunteers across the state, what we’re seeing is democracy in action,” Lyons told reporters during the press conference. “They’ve spent the last eight weeks all over the state gathering over 100,000 signatures.”
Lyons also praised volunteers for accomplishing the feat despite an organized campaign to disrupt their efforts.
Wendy Wakeman displays petitions. Geoff Diehl behind her, and Maureen Maloney (r).
Maureen Maloney (l), Gov. Candidate (and huge signature gatherer) Geoff Diehl, Petition Organizer Wendy Wakeman, MassGOP Chair Jim Lyons (r)
“What we saw the radical left do was organize from the beginning to interfere with our constitutional rights,” Lyons added, referencing state civil rights laws protecting signature collectors from harassment. “Just think about that — the lead law enforcement officer in the state, Attorney General Maura Healey — refused to protect the people out there collecting signatures.
“I want to say ‘thank-you, thank-you, thank-you’ to every single person who had to put up with this nonsense on a daily basis.”
Fair and Secure Massachusetts Chairwoman Maureen Maloney, whose son Matthew Denice was 23 when he was killed in 2011 by a drunk-driving illegal immigrant, called it an “honor” to help lead the effort. Maloney also singled out special praise to Republican gubernatorial candidate Geoff Diehl, whose volunteer team collected the highest totals, and who invited her to help lead the effort.
She disputed the Democrats’ narrative that the legislation makes state roads safer and pointed out that a 2020 law automatically registers those who obtain a Massachusetts driver’s license to vote.
“Voters lined up to sign our petition, they voiced to us their reasons for opposing the law,” Maloney recalled before adding that she witnessed firsthand the harassment campaign waged by leftists to prevent volunteers from carrying out their work.
“They intimidated voters, and often they caused enough of a disruption to prompt police to shut down our signature drives,” Maloney said. “These actions show how desperate Democrats are to keep voters from having their voices heard, and it was only through the dedication and efforts by all our volunteers that we will get this on the ballot in November.”
Wendy Wakeman, the lead organizer for the Fair and Secure Massachusetts campaign, hand-delivered a stack of completed signature sheets to the Boston Election Department following the press conference.
She noted that volunteers had only 59 days to clear the 41,000-signature threshold.
City and town clerks will continue certifying signatures through Friday, Sept. 2. Delivery of certified petitions to the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s office must be completed by 5 p.m. on Sept. 7.
The referendum question will be worded such that opponents of the new law will vote “no” in November. Check back in for future updates by visiting www.fairandsecurema.com.
EDITOR’S NOTE:
Republican candidate for governor Geoff Diehl spearheaded teams across the state to collect signatures. His opponent, who voted for Hillary Clinton against Donald J. Trump for president, businessman Chris Doughty did not appear to participate in any signature gathering efforts and apparently side-skirted this issue.
Congratulations. A great and succesful effort. A sad commentary that our state legislative leaders won’t lower the gas tax to help struggling citizens, but rushed through legislation to help illegal aliens. Our state highways are the most unruly that they’ve ever been. Speeders, road ragers and tailgaters are common. One can go from the South Shore up to the beginings of the North Shore and rarely if at all see a state police patrol. Now our state legislators want to add many thousands of illegal aliens to the streets.
The signature gatherers got over 100,000 signatures when they needed only 40,000. That shows that the ideology of the carpetbaggers who have taken over state politics is not supreme in this state. If more moderate to conservative voters in this state voted then the uncaring wokesters would be unsuccesful on election day.
There is hope for restoring liberty to Massachusetts given the efforts of volunteers from the GOP who collected over 100,000 certified signatures to put this attempt by the leftist progressive ideologues to enable non citizens to register to vote.
I am glad that I contributed to the effort by collecting signatures at my town dump in Southborough. Not everyone signed, some thought the roads would be safer if illegal aliens were licensed to drive a car and did not understand getting a driver’s license would enable them to register to vote as well.
Some did realize that these people would be able to vote and that was fine with them!
Meanwhile do our leaders realize that our incompetent president also signed an executive order, 14067 back in March, which is presented positively but would enable the government to be aware of every transaction and purchase citizens make and be able to shut off your access to your assets, that is your money if you do not have the preferred ideas politically! Incidentally, the ostensible purpose of the executive order 14067 is to replace paper currency, that is Federal Reserve Notes of any denomination, with a digital currency under the control of the central government, the Federal Reserve.
I am not an attorney and have no idea how this kind of executive order, although unconstitutional, can be prevented. I hope that the GOP leadership will be aware of this and will know how to prevent it from happening. It is worse that the law we just managed to put on the ballot. 14067 is a signed executive order giving the central government power over your personal money as well as surveillance of every person in the country. It is not subject to action by the Congress or the Senate or the Supreme Court and I don’t know if a nationwide ballot petition would be able to stop it.