337 Signatures: Court Hands Bellows Another Chance to Block Civil Rights Referendum from Ballot

An ill wind blows in Augusta for backers of the referendum to protect sex-based rights in public education and interscholastic sports.

The Cumberland County Superior Court has given the Secretary of State until May 26 to issue a new Determination of Validity. The Maine Girl Dads referendum — and the November ballot question on whether boys belong in girls’ sports and locker rooms — now turns on what happens in Room 127 of the State House.

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Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) signaled that she’s once again maneuvering to undercut a popular ballot referendum, and, once again, organizers behind the ballot question committee may have given her an opening to do just that.

The Office of the Secretary of State announced Wednesday morning that it will hold an adjudicatory hearing on May 12 to take new evidence on the citizen-initiated petition to “Designate School Sports Participation and Facilities by Sex” — the referendum better known to most Mainers as the Maine Girl Dads initiative.

The hearing is the direct consequence of an April 24 order from the Cumberland County Superior Court, which remanded Gilbert v. Bellows back to the Secretary’s office “for further proceedings consistent with this Order, which may include correcting the concessions identified [in the Court’s decision and order], taking new evidence, and developing further findings of fact as necessary.”

Translation: the court was not satisfied that Bellows got it right the first time, and it has handed her a tight calendar to fix it. The Secretary has been directed to issue a new Determination of Validity by May 26.

Although that might sound like a black eye for Bellows, it gives Maine’s most nakedly partisan and self-serving election administrator another opportunity to winnow down the thin ~3,000 signature margin the Protect Girls Sports in Maine ballot question committee held once the Secretary of State certified their submission.

The group submitted 79,692 petition signatures in February, but Bellows rejected 8,659 of those signatures for various reasons — mostly to do with paid signature-gatherers not following proper procedures. Under Maine law, the requirement for signatures is based on the most recent gubernatorial election, which for 2026 would mean the committee needs 67,682 signatures — a measure they exceeded by 3,351.

In claiming Bellows erred with her original certification, the court is effectively saying that an unknown number of those 3,351 signatures may also be suspect. If Bellows and the judicial branch conspire to bounce enough signatures from the re-certification, then the proposed protections for sex-based rights will not make the Nov. 2026 ballot.

The hearing will begin at 10:00 a.m. in Room 127 — the Taxation Committee Room — at the State House in Augusta. Chief Deputy Secretary of State Katherine McBrien will preside. Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Bolton, the same AAG whose Rule 80C brief is now being unwound on remand, will sit at the Chief Deputy’s elbow as legal counsel. The proceeding will be live-streamed on the Department’s YouTube page.

What Happened

Cumberland County Superior Court Justice Deborah Cashman sent the case back to Secretary of State Shenna Bellows after three Mainers — Jane Gilbert, Mark Sayre, and Kaitlin Webber — filed a challenge on March 27.

Gilbert, Sayre, and Webber argued that Bellows had counted thousands of signatures that should have been thrown out. Their challenge was not based on a single defect but on a long list of alleged problems that, taken together, they said should disqualify the initiative from the ballot.

Their arguments included claims that petition organizations failed to register properly under Maine law, that out-of-state circulators failed to consent to Maine jurisdiction, that some circulators left petitions unattended and then falsely swore they had witnessed every signature, that some signatures were forged, that some notaries had conflicts of interest because they had also worked as circulators, and that many signatures had technical defects involving dates, addresses, or duplicate entries.

In layman’s terms, the challenge threw everything at the wall to see what might stick. The petitioners' core legal theory was that Maine election statutes use mandatory language — words like "shall" and "must" — and that the Secretary cannot excuse defects by calling them minor or technical.

The case was filed under Rule 80C of the Maine Rules of Civil Procedure, which governs administrative appeals. The specific statutory authority is 21-A M.R.S. § 905, the section of Maine election law that allows voters to challenge the Secretary of State’s determinations on initiative petitions.

This matters for understanding standing. Maine law gives any registered voter the right to challenge the Secretary’s signature validation in Superior Court. The petitioners did not need to prove a personal injury beyond their status as Maine voters whose ballots would include — or not include — this initiative. The statute itself confers standing.

According to the Amended Notice of Hearing signed by McBrien on April 28, the parties may present evidence and argument on four buckets of issues, all of them lifted directly from the petitioners’ challenges:

• Challenge No. 2 — whether circulators engaged in conduct contrary to their circulator’s oath, and what the consequences should be for the signatures they collected;

• Challenge Table 19a — whether 31 individual signatures flagged as “suspicious” by the petitioners should be invalidated;

• Challenge No. 19 — whether two specific circulators engaged in misconduct that taints the signatures they collected;

• Challenges 3, 12, 14, 15, and 16 — whether Bellows should walk back any of the concessions she made in her Rule 80C brief, including the live question of whether out-of-state circulators can be allowed to file corrected personal-jurisdiction forms after the petition was already submitted to the state.

That last category is most significant for the Secretary’s office. In Bolton’s April 17 filing, the AG’s office conceded that as many as 3,014 signatures Bellows’ office had originally certified should have been invalidated. About half of those were collected by out-of-state circulators who failed to check the box on their affidavits consenting to Maine’s personal jurisdiction. The rest were duplicates her office missed and signatures with date problems her office did not flag. The court’s remand order tells her to revisit the question of whether she should be accepting after-the-fact “corrected” affidavits at all.

If you’re doing the math at home, the clearance margin is now in the hundreds.

If the Secretary, on remand, sustains the concessions she has already made, the cushion shrinks significantly. If the hearing produces evidence that two specific circulators engaged in oath-breaking misconduct, or that a meaningful share of the 31 “suspicious” signatures were forged or witnessed in violation of the circulator’s oath, the math tightens further.

One troubling sign for proponents of the referendum to protect sex-based rights in education is that paid signature collection is a notoriously sketchy business. The Protect Girls Sports in Maine committee is known to have used at least a few of the same contractors who derailed State Sen. Jim Libby (R-York)’s gubernatorial campaign by engaging in signature collection methods the Maine Ethics Commission described as fraudulent.

If those same contractors cut-corners, broke the rules, or outright forged signatures, Maine Girl Dad’s will have to focus on gubernatorial and legislative elections, rather than a popular referendum, to keep gender dysphoric young men out of their daughters’ locker rooms and athletic leagues.

Witnesses, exhibits, and the May 1 cutoff

The hearing will be conducted under the Maine Administrative Procedure Act. Witnesses may appear in person or by video conference. Written affidavits will not be admitted unless the affiant is available for cross-examination — a rule that has real bite given that much of Gilbert’s case has, until now, been documented through affidavits, video, and photographs of unattended petition forms.

Witness lists and exhibit lists are due to the Secretary’s office by Tuesday, May 5. The full Agency Record filed with the Superior Court on April 6 — and supplemented by court order on April 24 — will be admitted into the hearing record at the start of the proceeding. Closing arguments will be filed in writing.

Anyone seeking to intervene must file a written request with the Secretary, copying all parties, no later than 4:00 p.m. on Friday, May 1. (Tomorrow.)

Gilbert, Sayre, and Webber are represented by Christopher D. Dodge of the Elias Law Group out of Washington, D.C., and James Monteleone of Bernstein Shur in Portland. The Elias Law Group, for readers who haven’t been keeping score, is the Marc Elias firm — the same shop that has spent the better part of a decade helping the national Democratic Party litigate over election rules from coast to coast. It’s also the same law firm Bellows has paid at least $12,000 via her gubernatorial campaign committee.

Protect Girls Sports (PGS) in Maine, the ballot question committee defending the petition, is represented by Timothy Woodcock of Katahdin Law in Bangor. PGS was permitted to intervene by the Superior Court in support of the petition’s validity and will be a full party at the hearing.

The Secretary of State will be defended by AAG Bolton, who, in addition to advising the presiding officer, will be in the strange institutional posture of arguing for the validity of a determination his client has already partially conceded was wrong.

What to watch on May 12

Three things are worth watching closely when the hearing convenes in Room 127.

First, the circulator-oath evidence. The petitioners have alleged that several circulators left petitions unattended — meaning voters signed without the circulator present, in direct violation of the constitutional requirement that the circulator personally witness each signature. They have also alleged that two specific circulators may have outright forged signatures. Bolton has already conceded that those questions cannot be resolved on the paper record and require fact-finding. May 12 is the fact-finding.

Second, the “corrected forms” question. Whether the Secretary may allow out-of-state circulators to retroactively check the box consenting to Maine personal jurisdiction — a box they were required to check before submission — goes to the integrity of the entire process. If the answer is yes, the rule effectively becomes meaningless. If the answer is no, somewhere on the order of 1,500 signatures collected by non-resident circulators come off the pile. That decision would also raise questions about the validity of signatures submitted for, well, basically everything that requires signatures. Again, the signature collection game is a dirty hustle. It almost always involves out-of-state hired guns loitering outside of grocery stores.

Third, the math. The petition crossed the threshold by 3,351 valid signatures. The Secretary has already conceded about 3,014. The hearing exists to resolve the rest — the 31 “suspicious” signatures, the unattended-petition signatures, the alleged forgeries, and the contested categories in Challenges 12, 14, 15, and 16. There is no scenario in which May 12 does not directly determine whether Maine voters get to vote in November on whether boys belong in girls’ sports.

The hearing will be livestreamed on the Department of the Secretary of State’s YouTube page beginning at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, May 12. The Secretary’s new Determination of Validity is due by May 26.

The moral of the story: Don’t hire scumbags and morons to do your signature collection.