Massachusetts: Signature forgery claim in Saugus recall

There is now claims that of signature forgery on the petitions against Saugus Selectmen chair Ellen Faiella. Petitions against the other three selectmen have not been examined yet. Petitioners handed in 4850 signatures, and needed 4443 (recall is over the firing of the town manager). The recall is set for March 17. The story seems to say that the claim has been brought by a pro-selectmen PAC and its consultant, not by actual voters. If they can't get voters to state that they didn't sign, the forgery claim will face a very hard challenge to be successful.

Here's the key info:

Handwriting consultant Eileen Page, hired by the pro-selectmen PAC, said she found 832 unreadable or questionable signatures, even though Town Clerk Ellen Schena only found 43 she could not certify last November, when the issue first came up. Five hundred other names were tossed out because they were not registered voters.

“Signatures shifted from print to cursive,” she said. “People’s names were misspelled — there was either a letter that shouldn’t be there, or letters were omitted. No effort was made to disguise the writing style.”