On April 10, Maine’s Governor Janet Mills extended the petition deadline for non-presidential independent candidates from May 26 to June 26. She did not change the independent presidential petition deadline, which continues to be August 3.
This change was included in the same order that changed the date of the non-presidential primary from June 9 to July 14. Here is the order.
I think the original deadline was June 1st and it got extended to July 1st.
“The June 1, 2020 deadline for filing non-party petitions with the Secretary of State
under 21-A M.R.S. § 354(8-A) shall be July 1, 2020;
How many votes of USA military folks overseas are being totally messed up with all the non-stop changing election dates ???
“Deadline” is an ambiguous term in Maine law. There is the deadline for towns to check the signatures, and there is a later deadline for the candidate or group to then get those petitions filed with the Secretary of State. When I say “deadline” I mean the date on which the group must finish the petition drive. A few other states have this double-sided “deadline” in their law.
This will have no negative impact on expat/military/etc overseas mail-in ballots. It would have been a valid concern if the date was moved up earlier, but moving back the date later is no problem.