SJC Rules GOP Candidate Brady Will Make 9th District Ballot In Bid To Unseat Keating

Republican candidate Helen Brady will challenge Congressman Bill Keating this fall after all.

The state's highest court ruled Monday that Brady is indeed 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 signatures.

Following a complaint from a registered 9th Congressional District voter, the SBLC decided that a third-party vendor Brady used improperly stored electronic signatures in a separate file and imported them into the final document.

The Supreme Judicial Court, which in an April decision wrote the e-signature requirements Brady and all other candidates had to follow, disagreed. In a two-page initial order, the court wrote Monday that the process Brady's campaign used "complied in substance with the material requirements" of its past decision.

The high court ordered Secretary of State William Galvin to print Brady's name on the Sept. 1 Republican primary ballot.

Brady is the only Republican eligible to run in her district, so she has a clear path to the Nov. 3 general election against Keating, a five-term incumbent who also has no primary opponent.