Maine’s Democrat-dominated state government is in a last-ditch legal battle to stop people, for privacy’s sake, from noting errors on state voter rolls.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) wants to know whether some people are registered to vote in the state of Maine and the state of New York at the same time.
To get the answer to that question and more, in October 2019, the PILF requested a copy of Maine’s statewide voter roll from the Maine Secretary of State’s Office.
The request was denied, and a four-year-long legal battle with Maine’s Democrat establishment ensued.
Both houses of the state Legislature have Democrat majorities, and the secretary of state, attorney general, and governor are all Democrats.
In February 2020, the PILF filed a lawsuit in a federal district court alleging that Maine’s election law that limited access to the state voter roll to a few specified entities, such as political parties, violated the National Voting Rights Act of 1993 (NVRA).
In order to make the PILF’s case moot, the Democrat-controlled state Legislature, with the approval of Maine Gov. Janet Mills, changed the statute to allow broader access to the voter roll but with restrictions that narrowly confined the scope of any examination of the rolls to determining whether Maine was carrying out its roll maintenance obligations.
The new law banned individuals from publicizing any findings of error that included specific data entries on the state voter roll under penalty of hefty fines.
Legal Maneuvers
The changes effectively prohibited the PILF from comparing Maine’s state voter roll with that of New York state to see whether there were any double registrations.
Many New Yorkers own summer homes in the popular resort areas of Maine.
In response to the new statute, the PILF challenged the use restrictions and fines in an amended complaint.
The issues the PILF raised in its lawsuit were decided in March, when a U.S. district court judge ruled that Maine’s election statutes restricting the use of the state voter roll and the fines aimed at silencing investigators were in violation of the NVRA.
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, appealed the decision to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.
By Steven Kovac
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