Section 39 Publishing political advertisements; statement; names; signatures - Massachusetts Statutes

Section 39. No person shall publish or cause to be published in a newspaper or other periodical any paid advertisement designed or tending to aid, injure, or defeat any candidate for public office or any question submitted to the voters, unless the name of the chairman or secretary or the names of two officers of the political or other organization inserting the same, or the name of one or more persons eighteen years of age or older who are responsible therefor, with the residence and the street and number thereof, of each such person eighteen years of age or older appears therein in the nature of a signature; provided, that each such person eighteen years of age or older has signed his name in the presence of a witness to the following statement authorizing the insertion of such advertisement. The statement shall be retained by the newspaper or periodical for not less than one year, shall be available to any person upon request, and shall be in substantially the following form:

I hereby authorize the affixing of my name to the attached political advertisement on behalf of or in opposition to      , candidate for       in the election to be held in the current year, or on behalf of or in opposition to a question being submitted to the voters in the election in the current year.

Witness:
Signature:

Address:
Address:

Date:

Such matter inserted in reading columns shall be preceded or followed by the word “Advertisement” in a separate line, in type not smaller than that of the body type of the newspaper or other periodical. This section shall not authorize expenditures otherwise prohibited by this chapter.

Any corporation violating any provision of this section or section thirty-eight, relative to payments to newspapers and periodicals, and to political advertising, shall be punished by a fine of not more than ten thousand dollars, and any officer, director or agent of a corporation violating any such provision, who authorized such violation, or any person who violates, or in any way knowingly aids or abets the violation of, any such provision, shall be punished by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars, or by imprisonment for not more than one year.