On June 14, a Maine Superior Court ruled that independent U.S. Senate candidate Herbert Hoffman should remain on the ballot. Knutson v Department of the Secretary of State, AP-08-49. The Secretary of State had ruled that Hoffman’s petition has 4,038 valid signatures. He needed 4,000. John Knutson, state chair of the Maine Democratic Party, had then sued the Secretary of State, charging that Hoffman should be off the ballot.

Everyone agrees that more than 4,000 registered voters signed the petition. The disagreement stems from the fact that three particular signers charged that the person who asked them to sign the petition was not the same person who signed off on that petititon sheet as the witness. The Secretary of State had not counted those three signatures, but the Democratic Party wants those entire sheets invalidated, instead of just the three particular signers. The witness does not need to be the person who spoke to the voter; the witness just needs to be someone who was in the presence of the voter. The Secretary of State, and the Superior Court, define “in the presense of” to mean “close proximity coupled with awareness.” Therefore, they said that there is no evidence that the witness wasn’t “in the presense of” the other signers on those sheets.

From a common-sense viewpoint, one wonders what difference it makes who circulated the petition, as long as the petition was signed by the proper number of registered voters. There are about a dozen states which don’t even require the circulator to sign the petition forms, and therefore no one even knows or cares who circulated the petition. These states just care how many registered voters signed the petition. Thanks to David Bright for this news.