Did Bill Clinton violate election rules in Massachusetts? Probably not

Bill Clinton Illegally Wanders Into Polling Station, Blocking Voters

Former President Bill Clinton campaigns for his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, at the Tarrant County College Trinity River Campus in downtown Fort Worth. (Andy Jacobsohn/The Dallas Morning News)

The people of Reddit are concerned the former leader of the free world violated election rules in Massachusetts on Tuesday.

Former President Bill Clinton made several stops at polling stations in the state, including in New Bedford and the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. He spoke with workers, bought a cup of coffee and posed for photos, according to press pool reports.

Sera Congi, of WCVB-TV (ABC-5) in Needham, Mass., tweeted this video of Clinton shaking hands with election workers at the Holy Name Parish Schools gymnasium in West Roxbury. He was accompanied by Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh.

Thats when the trouble started.

Arent there rules about electioneering at the polling location? replied many to the initial Twitter video.

How is this legal? asked another.

A woman in Chicago was so outraged she wrote a petition on Change.org calling for Clintons arrest and prosecution on charges of violating Massachusetts election laws.

The outrage spread from Twitter to Reddit. Users posted that Clinton was creating a scene that blocked the entrance to polling places. The original poster speculates that they were being blocked from entering a polling place in New Bedford by the crowd because the poster was a Bernie Sanders supporter.

This may have taken place because everybody I know is voting for Sanders, the poster wrote. Who knows, just speculating.

Many are concerned that Clinton was purposefully blocking Sanders voters from getting the polls, which allowed Hillary Clinton to edge out a victory over Sanders in Massachusetts. Clinton beat Sanders by more than 17,000 votes in the state, though.

The New York Times reports that Bill Clinton has always loved Election Day and was stopping at polling places in different parts of the state.

Clinton spoke about the importance of voting rights to a crowd in Fort Worth on Monday.

If we are all going to rise together, we have to be able to vote together, Clinton said Monday.

We had to remind some of our poll workers that even a president cant go inside and work a polling place, William F. Galvin, the Massachusetts secretary of state, told The Times.

Massachusetts law prohibits campaigning within 150 feet of voting booths. People are entitled to their privacy, Galvin told The Times.

In Texas, laws are similar. A person is considered to be electioneering if he or she is within 100 feet of an outside door of a polling place during the voting period and is loitering, openly campaigning for or against a candidate or distributing political signs or literature.

It is worth noting that almost any time candidates go to a polling place, they are followed by a pack of reporters and cameras waiting to talk to them about casting a ballot, presumably for themselves.

See Ted Cruz voting yesterday in Houston:

And here is an ABC News video of Sanders himself in Burlington, Vt.:

ABC Breaking News | Latest News Videos

So did Bill Clinton break Massachusetts election laws? Only if he was actively campaigning when he went inside the polling stations, which doesnt seem to be the case.

Did the pack of people traveling with him make things a little inconvenient for voters? Probably. Did it rise to the level of a crime? Probably not.

President Clinton joined Mayor Walsh to thank poll workers in West Roxbury this morning, Bonnie Gilpin, a spokeswoman for Boston Mayor Walsh told The Boston Globe.

Source: http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2016/03/did-bill-clinton-violate-election-rules-in-massachusetts-probably-not.html/