On September 28, a state Superior Court upheld Maine’s requirement that petitions must be physically sent to each town clerk by the candidate or group that is circulating a petition.  An independent candidate for Governor, Alex Hammer, had collected the needed 4,000 valid signatures to be on the ballot, but to save money, energy, and time, he had scanned each set of petitions at high resolution, and e-mailed them to the various town clerks.  See this story.  The case is Hammer v Office of the Secretary of State, Penobscot County, AP2010-15.

Several New England states continue to force petitioning individuals and groups to file their petitions with each town, and then collect them and physically transport them to the Secretary of State.  This procedure is hopelessly out-of-date, because the Help America Vote Act requires each state elections office to have its own list of all the registered voters in that state.