BANGOR, Maine (Legal Newsline) – A Maine federal judge is skeptical about the likelihood a political action committee and a state lawmaker will be able to convince him to strike down a state law regarding signature-gathering.
Judge John Woodcock on Jan. 11 refused to grant a temporary restraining order against a part of Maine law that requires those who circulate petitions in the state to be registered voters there. We the People PAC, Rep. Billy Bob Faulkingham and the Liberty Initiative Fund want to use a Michigan petition circulator to help their cause.
They are circulating a petition to force the legislature to adopt a proposed ban on all non-citizen voting in the state or to place the issue on the next general election ballot as a direct initiative.
Nicholas Kowalski, a Michigan professional petition circulator, wants to help gather the required 63,067 signatures by Feb. 26 but is forbidden by state law because he is not registered to vote in Maine. The lawsuit challenges both the residency requirement and the voter registration requirement.
There are “serious legal issues” raised in their Dec. 31 complaint, Judge Woodcock ruled, but he also said they failed to provide a sufficient uncontested factual record and delayed bringing the lawsuit.
“(T)he plaintiffs here have put forth no evidence that individual circulators, who are unregistered voters but Maine residents, and whom they want to hire, are opposed to registering to vote,” Woodrock wrote.
“The sparse record before the court suggests that 97% of Maine’s voter-eligible population – all but about 32,000 eligible residents – is registered to vote, and the defendants have outlined the easy voter registration process.”
Though the plaintiffs say they want to hire students from Maine colleges who are unregistered but offered no evidence as to how their inability to do so burdens them, Woodcock wrote.
Likewise, they offer no proof about the harm they suffer from not being able to hire out-of-state circulators like Kowalski, the judge wrote.
“The evidence before the court suggests that the burden is less than severe,” Woodcock wrote.
“In the last five years, the Secretary of State received nine citizen initiatives and three people’s veto referenda; all but one had enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot,” he wrote.
“The plaintiffs had since August 2019 to collect the requisite amount of signatures, and it is unclear why now the burden of voter registration warrants extraordinary relief.”
Woodcock is ordering a telephone conference to discuss the plaintiffs’ possible next steps.