Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign sued Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows last week, claiming that barring him from gathering petition signatures at Maine polling sites is unconstitutional.
The lawsuit, which alleges Bellows is in violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, was filed by Kennedy on Feb. 21 to the U.S. District Court. He argued in the complaint that independent candidates should be allowed to garner petition signatures inside polling places during the state’s March 5 Super Tuesday primary.
“[Bellows] is out of control, exposing herself as a Democrat partisan hack, disinterested in the rule of law, basic constitutional protections, in favor of peacocking around as the lap dog of an incompetent, desperate, senile President,” Kennedy’s lawyers wrote in the civil complaint.
In order to qualify to be on the November ballot, Maine’s current election law requires independent candidates to collect at least 4,000 signatures from registered voters and submit them to the secretary of state.
“Maine law is very clear: within the voting place itself, a person may not influence another person’s decision regarding a candidate for an office or question that is on the ballot for the election that day,” Bellows said in a statement Thursday in defense of Kennedy’s complaint. “That’s why no presidential campaign can collect signatures on presidential primary day.”
Kennedy argued in the lawsuit that he was told by town clerks he was allowed to gather petitions at polling sites during the primary before Bellows later prohibited him from doing so.
“It’s important to recognize that it’s when a candidate’s office is on the ballot, that they cannot collect signatures because, for good reason, Maine law prohibits political activities that influence a voter,” Bellows said in the statement.
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According to the complaint, if a person is trying to influence voter’s decisions within 250 feet of a polling location, state law prohibits it. Kennedy argues in his complaint that because his name is not on the Republican or Democratic primary ballots, he is legally able to garner signatures for his petition at polling sites during the March primary.
Kennedy, who announced his presidential bid as an independent in October, told CNN during an interview last month that he “won’t have any problem” getting his name on the November ballot, though his campaign is still trying to get his name on the ballots in other states. He has qualified for the ballot in Utah and New Hampshire, and recently Georgia and Arizona.
