On February 24, the Maine Green Party announced publicly that it will not be able to place its candidate for U.S. Senate, Lisa Savage, on the Maine Green Party primary ballot. Maine, like Massachusetts and Arizona, makes it extremely difficult for a small ballot-qualified party to place members on its own primary ballot. Maine requires 2,000 signatures of party members, regardless of whether the party has hundreds of thousands of members, or a much smaller number.

The Maine Libertarian Party is currently suing over the primary petition requirements, and the fact that the Green Party was unable to overcome will be put into evidence. The only three ballot-qualified parties in Maine in the last 40 years, other than the Democratic and Republican Parties, have been the Libertarian, Reform, and Green Parties. None of them has ever been able to place any member on the primary ballot who was running for either house of Congress.

Savage will instead petition as an independent. That requires 4,000 signatures, but any voter may sign, so it is far easier than getting 2,000 signatures of party members. The Maine Green Party has 43,143 registered members but they are scattered all over the state.