On August 2, the Maine legislature adjourned. The session had been the longest in Maine history. Only three election law bills passed in 2017. LD 1571 made minor improvements for minor parties seeking to get on the ballot and remain on. LD 297 raises the costs for candidates to seek a recount. LD 1384 made many small changes to the election law, including removing write-in space from the ballot unless a declared write-in candidate files. Governor Paul LePage had vetoed the latter two bills, but in each case the legislature overrode his veto.

Bills that failed to become law would have done these things: install a top-two system; let independent voters vote in primaries without joining a party at the polls on primary election day; change the law on ranked choice voting; ban paying petitioners per signature; require statewide initiative petitions to collect a certain number of signatures in each US House district; cut back public funding; remove partisan labels from the ballot for candidates who use the independent petition procedure; and remove the requirement that five sample ballots be posted at each polling place (the bill lowered that to just one sample ballot per polling place). That latter bill, LD 1058, had passed the legislature but the Governor vetoed it and his veto was sustained.

On August 2, U.S. District Court Judge David Nuffer issued an injunction, putting the United Utah Party’s nominee for U.S. House on the ballot in the special election set for November 7, 2017, in the Third District. United Utah Party v Cox, 2:17cv-655. The order says the special election procedures, which required a party to have been ballot-qualified by May of this year, are unconstitutionally early. It says, “The Constitution guarantees the freedom to associate in political parties for the advancement of beliefs and ideas. The state’s interests do not require or justify effectively barring UUP and its candidate, Jim Bennett, from participating in the Special Election as a new political party. Here is the 50-page decision. This is the first constitutional ballot access case any minor party or independent candidate has won since April 2017.

The most interesting part of the decision starts on page 30. On page 35, the decision rejects the idea that Bennett should simply have qualified as an independent candidate, which the deadlines permitted him to do. Page 39 says that the state interest in saving election administration costs cannot overcome the right for new parties to form. Page 41 rejects the idea that allowing a new party on the ballot will lead to “factionalism.” The decision even says that factionalism is reduced when new parties are allowed to participate.