The First Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling last Friday declaring that Maine’s laws governing the use and dissemination of the state’s voter rolls are contradictory to — and preempted by — existing federal law.
As it is currently written, state law largely prohibits those who obtain a copy of the voter file from sharing and publishing the data it contains, but according to the First Circuit’s ruling, these restrictions violate the federal National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA).
Centered around these statutes as they relate to the dissemination and use of Maine’s voter rolls, is the legal battle between Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) — a 501(c)(3) public interest law firm focused on “election integrity” — and the Maine Secretary of State’s Office.
The incident that incited the four-year long legal fight took place in October of 2019 when PILF emailed the Maine Secretary of State’s office requesting access to Maine’s statewide voter registration list.
The letter sent by the organization acknowledges the fact that state law at the time prohibited the fulfillment of their request but asserts that the NVRA must be understood to preempt and supersede the state’s rules.
Consequently, PILF argued that should the Secretary of State fail to provide the requested information, the office would be in violation of the NVRA.
Over the next several weeks, PILF furnished the Secretary of State’s Office with multiple warnings and notices that legal action would be taken if access continued to be denied.
In February of 2020, after being repeatedly denied access to Maine’s voter rolls, PILF filed a lawsuit against the Maine Secretary of State’s Office — then occupied by Matthew Dunlap — seeking “declaratory and injunctive relief” for for the office’s alleged violations of the NVRA.
Midway through their battle in the courtroom, Maine’s statutory landscape shifted, expanding access to voter registration data.
Despite the changes made by the Legislature, however, the use of voter file remained restricted, thus spurring PILF to update their lawsuit and continue the legal fight against the Maine Secretary of State’s Office, which was now occupied by Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.
As amended, the statute states that recipients of the voter file cannot sell or transfer the information provided to them for any purpose other than evaluating the “State’s” compliance with its obligations.
The revised statute also prohibits recipients from using the records given to them in such a way that would compromise individual voters’ identifying information.
Because PILF’s intended use of the voter registration information was to “evaluate how and whether other states or local governments are complying with list maintenance obligations and other best practices” and to “enforce state and federal voter list maintenance law in Maine and/or in other states and local governments,” they argued that their records request would still be in violation of Maine state law.
Furthermore, PILF also expressed concerns because they felt the law would prohibit them from sharing data with other state and local governments — not only because it would violate the sharing provisions of the law, but also because other states’ public records law may make voters’ identifying information available in a manner that would violate Maine’s law.
Because PILF would be required to sign a form agreeing to these use conditions prior to obtaining access to the records in question, they argued that the Secretary of State was “functionally” denying them access to the records to which they believed themselves to be entitled under the federal NVRA.
In March of last year, the District Court ruled in favor of PILF, declaring that Maine’s statutes governing access to and use of voter registration records were in violation of the federal NVRA.
The court further confirmed that because the NVRA is a federal law, it supersedes and preempts any state laws that contradict it.
Shortly after this ruling was issued, Bellows filed a notice of appeal and requested that the court issue a stay pending the appeal that would prevent PILF from taking any action that would result in the disclosure of voters’ identifying personal information.
The court granted Bellow’s request on June 7 pending the Circuit Court’s consideration of the case.
In the First Circuit’s ruling released last Friday, the judges effectively affirmed the District Court’s decision in its entirety, echoing many of the points made by the lower court.
Referred to as the “Use Ban,” the state laws that govern the sharing of voter registration data require that those who are given a copy of the voter file do not “sell, transfer to another person or use the voter information or nay part of the information for any purpose that is not directly related to evaluating the State’s compliance with its voter list maintenance obligations.”
According to the First Circuit’s interpretation of this law, the use of the term “State’s” is indicative that the data can only be used to evaluate Maine’s compliance with its obligation, not that of other states.
The law’s “Publication Ban” prohibits the public release of data contained in the voter file, which the Circuit Court ruled is contrary to Congress’ intentions when it required that voter records be “ma[d]e available for public inspection.”
While the Circuit Court’s ruling recognized the validity of the privacy concerns disclosure raises, it was argued that “it is not [their] call to revisit the careful balance struck by Congress in weighing the privacy risks posed by public disclosure against the interests favoring the same.”
“This is monumental victory for transparency in elections,” said PILF President J. Christian Adams in a statement released Monday. “The use restrictions would have prohibited basic voter roll research and limited PILF’s ability to share its findings with the public.”
“PILF was prohibited from comparing Maine’s and New York’s voter rolls to spot duplicate registrations under the law,” Adams said. “Other states should think twice before passing laws that restrict the public from accessing the voter file and speaking about any errors.”
As of the publication of this article, Bellows has not issued a statement on the First Circuit’s ruling in this case, nor has she publicly indicated whether or not she plans to attempt to appeal the decision further.
Click Here to Read the First Circuit’s Full Ruling
