Considering how close this man came to winning MA-5, I'm somewhat surprised he cannot get enough signatures to get on the ballot against John Kerry. Since this doesn't happen often and hasn't been a recurrent problem for Massachusetts Republicans in the past - it would either suggest that Ogonowski is being rather lazy or that its just not meant to be maybe?
Massachusetts is rather strict regarding the rules for collecting signatures and how agressively they're checked. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if Ogonowski was being genuine when he said that the campaign turned in 22,000 signatures.
For a signature to count, the signature sheet needs to be sent back to the town of which said signer claims registration in for verification. If Ogonowski's people were working the street corners of, say, Newbury Street, they've probably got a whole ton of invalid signatures from Democrats infecting the pile.
It sounds like it's too early to count Ogonowski out yet—not every town has certified signatures, it looks like. But this is grim, and has sunk campaigns, Republican and Democratic alike. In fact, a black Republican transvestite picked up a State Rep seat in one of the worst neighborhoods in Boston back in 1992 because the Democratic incumbent was kicked off the ballot due to a problem with bad signatures.
