AUGUSTA — Supporters of a ballot question to impose restrictions on transgender sports participation and bathroom access failed to gather enough valid signatures for a November vote, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said Tuesday.
The decision follows a recommendation issued last week by Bellows’ office that Protect Girls Sports in Maine failed to reach the required 67,682 signatures to put a question on the fall ballot.
After an investigation, Bellows’ office now says the group fell 532 signatures short of the required number.
“A failure to follow the law by at least two circulators demonstrated there were insufficient signatures to qualify the petition for the November ballot,” she told reporters on Tuesday.
Protect Girls Sports is expected to appeal the decision.
Bellows issued a decision in March that found that the group had gathered enough valid signatures.
But an appeal filed in Superior Court challenged her decision. A judge sent the matter back to Bellows’ office to investigate claims that signature gathers left petitions unattended and in some cases, signed voters’ names without their knowledge.
During a hearing, witnesses from several towns testified that they watched signature collectors leave their petition forms unattended for several minutes or longer. State law requires signatures to be witnessed.
Oxford Town Clerk Kathleen Dillingham testified that she received a complaint from one voter and followed up with two others to discover that they did not sign the petition even though their names appeared.
After an investigating, the Secretary of State’s Office determined that 61 signatures submitted by that circulator should have been thrown out.
More than 2,800 were invalidated because the circulator did not file a valid circulator’s affidavit when the petitions were filed, according to the recommended decision.
And 5,066 are invalid because they did not belong to a registered voter in that municipality, along with 1,930 that were duplicates.
Bellows said photos and videos turned in by witnesses at the hearing provided information to her office that it did not have when it initially approved the signatures.
“What happened in this case is that out of state circulators failed to agree to abide by the laws of Maine and at least two circulators did not abide by the laws of Maine,” she said.
The initiative requires schools to designate all sports teams as male, female or co-ed. It defines sex as a person’s status at birth. It requires public schools to maintain separate restrooms, locker rooms and shower rooms for girls and boys.
Bellows said Protect Girls Sports has 10 days to appeal her decision and a judge will then uphold her finding, overturn it or send it back to her office for additional investigation.
Also, the group can work to gather additional signatures to get enough to meet the threshold, but it would be too late to make the November ballot, Bellows said.
Prior to the signature gathering effort, Bellows said her staff spent multiple hours with the group to explain Maine law with regard to citizen initiatives.
“Unfortunately, out of state circulators either did not adhere to the training provided by those leading the initiative or those leading the initiative failed to train their out of state circulators sufficiently to avoid the legal problems that resulted in invalidating the petition,” she said.
Republican candidate for governor Jonathan Bush slammed Bellows for the decision, calling her a “partisan hack.” Bellows is a Democrat who is running for governor in the June 9 Democratic primary.
“You just can’t trust Augusta insiders — they will always silence the voice of the people,” Bush said in a statement. “Mainers should be able to join me in voting for this referendum.”
On the other side of the issue, the Campaign for Free and Fair Schools said the process for validating signatures worked.
“Maine has strict rules in place to protect the integrity of our elections and our system of direct democracy,” David Farmer, campaign manager, said in a statement. “The paid, ouf-of-state signature gatheres and the billionaire who paid to try to put this question on the ballot failed to follow the rules.”
