U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Torresen, an Obama appointee, will hear Alexander v Dunlap, 1:18cv-220, on Friday, June 8, at 2 p.m. This is the case in which Max Linn, a candidate in the Maine Republican primary for U.S. Senate, hopes to obtain an order letting his votes be counted. He is already on the ballot. After the towns checked his petitions and determined he had enough valid signatures, the Maine Secretary of State reversed that finding. But, by then, Linn’s name was already on the primary ballots. The Secretary of State ordered that signs be posted in each polling place, saying votes for Linn won’t be counted.
How many absentee ballots — back to Maine regime now and arriving back each day ???
That is not an accurate account.
In Maine, petitions are submitted to each town. Town election officials check to make sure the signers are registered, and enrolled in the correct party, and may check signatures.
These are collectively submitted to the SOS who determines if there are enough signatures. The petitions are then subject to challenge. Max Linn’s petitions were challenged by his opponent Eric Brakey (actually by his campaign manager – a challenge may be made by any resident of the state).
The SOS determined that several petition sheets contained purported signatures of dead person, persons who were out of the country, or who completed affidavits that they had not signed a petition. There was also evidence of signature mismatches, and forensic evidence that scribbles were not signatures – written by some one else, and that these corresponded to signature mismatches:
For example a town clerk may have discounted a signature as not matching registration records, and the forensic expert found evidence of not being signed, such as hesitation marks.
The SOS disallowed all signatures on such sheets, based on an assumption that the circulator’s oath was fraudulent (that they had not witnessed the signings). 11 sheets with 9 different circulators were invalidated.
After a hearing on March 29, the SOS determined that Minn still had enough signatures (barely).
The Brakey Campaign then went to a state district court in Augusta, and got a court order for the SOS to consider additional evidence. The SOS acting under a court order, held a second hearing on April 24, at which time additional sheets were disallowed. This left the petitions 10 short of the needed signatures.
This administrative decision was reviewed by the district court and upheld, and was subsequently upheld by the Maine Supreme Court.
Maine has a procedure for handling late withdrawals (within 70 days of the election), by which the SOS informs the town clerks to not count votes for the withdrawn candidate, and to also post notices to voters that votes for the candidate will not be counted. It is not unreasonable to apply this procedure to lately disqualified candidates.
Amusingly, one of the withdrawn candidates is in the RCV congressional race. Half of Maine’s Democrats will be given instructions which might cause them to leave the race blank, or not rank the candidates for fear of invalidating their vote.
Apparently at the second hearing (I have only found news reports), a circulator testified that her petition sheets had been salted with invalid signatures after she had her sheet notarized. The plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit include the circulator and signers from one town. The purpose of notarization is to ensure (to the extent that a sworn oath can) that the circulator had witnessed the signing of the petition, and made a reasonable attempt to verify identity and validity.
The SOS had disallowed whole sheets based on their including signatures of dead persons, non-signers, and fake signatures. That is, the SOS interpreted the sheet as being fraudulently witnessed.
Incidentally, Governor LePage has endorsed Brakey. Minn is campaigning on the the basis of not letting the Democrats (SOS Dunlap is a Democrat) stop him from running. Minn is running as a Trump Republican. Brakey is running as a Paul Republican.
How many FELONS involved ???
An excuse for Trump to declare a rebellion in Maine attempting to overthrow the USA regime ???
@DR,
It is unknown who added the extra names. A curiosity is that the Linn campaign did not track down all the circulators. I think only three testified in the hearings. One was able to explain how they gathered signatures. It sounds like she was an old-fashioned volunteer who went door to door with her friend. They were able to go back to the voters who had a recollection of signing. Another circulator thought that he had collected signatures at a shopping center, but didn’t remember where. The third said that one sheet with his name on it was not collected by him, but that he had collected another.
Maine does not disenfranchise felons. As you know, the 14th Amendment is discretionary. Linn has said he plans to run against Susan Collins in 2020.