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Bill Clinton was close to violating election rules on Super Tuesday

Win McNamee/Getty Images

The Clinton campaign got a warning to rein in Bill Clinton after the former president came a little too close to the polls on Super Tuesday.

Massachusetts's election rules strictly forbid soliciting votes within 150 feet of a polling station.

But after Bill Clinton and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh spent part of the day greeting voters and poll volunteers at the Holy Name Parish School in Boston, a Super Tuesday polling station, the office of the secretary of the commonwealth called to remind them of the rules.

The mayor's office maintains that the two were not there to solicit any votes, but rather to thank poll workers for their help, according to reporting from the Boston Globe. But the secretary of the commonwealth's office didn't quite buy it.

"He’s a well known person. And he’s a spouse of a candidate," the secretary of the commonwealth's spokesperson Brian McNiff told the Globe. "That should answer the question [of whether Bill was soliciting]."

But Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin himself was a little more lenient in an interview with the New York Times, saying that Clinton just has to be careful not to cross the line between having a presence and soliciting votes.

"We just took the extra precaution of telling them because this is not a usual occurrence. You don’t usually get a president doing this," Galvin told the Times.

Bill Clinton, who has been active on Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, seems to have been familiar with the rules. According to reports on the ground, one woman asked Bill for a picture, to which he said, "As long as we’re not violating any election laws."

Whether Bill was soliciting or not, Hillary narrowly won the Massachusetts primary over Sen. Bernie Sanders Tuesday night, claiming seven of the 11 Democratic elections overall.