Maine’s voter rolls must be made available for public inspection, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday.
Writing for the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Gustavo Gelpí, a Biden appointee, ruled that Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows must allow the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) to inspect the state’s voter rolls as specified under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). Bellows, a Democrat, is currently engaged in a legally suspect attempt to kick former President Donald Trump off of Maine’s 2024 presidential primary ballot.
“[W]hether voter registration rolls are accurate and current cannot be determined without inspecting the Voter File … In other words, the evaluation of voter registration rolls would be impossible if the results of Maine’s voter list registration and maintenance activities were not subject to public disclosure,” Gelpí wrote. “For the above reasons, Maine’s Voter File is a ‘record concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters’ and is thus subject to disclosure under Section 8 [of the NVRA].”
The entire saga began in October 2019 when PILF requested a copy of Maine’s voter file and “voting histories.” The office of then-Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, a Democrat, denied PILF’s request, “citing state law that limited access to preferred entities like political parties.” This prompted the conservative legal group to sue Dunlap’s office in February 2020.
According to PILF, Maine altered its laws in 2021 to prevent watchdog
