Secretary of State (SoS) Shenna Bellows decided on Tuesday to remove the referendum question to protect girls’ sports and spaces from November’s ballot after previously determining that it could appear, following challenges to the legitimacy of its signatures.
[RELATED: Contentious Hearing Over Maine Girl Dads Ballot Initiative Puts Bellows’ Role Under Scrutiny…]
“Citizen initiatives are direct democracy. Just as we take voting security seriously, we take petition integrity seriously,” said Bellows in a statement provided to the Portland Press Herald.
“Unfortunately, some out-of-state circulators failed to meet certain legal requirements for petitions, resulting in this initiative failing to qualify for the ballot after legal review. I am proud of the hard work and dedication of the Secretary of State staff who work so hard to safeguard our elections for the benefit of every Maine voter,” she added.
Bellows’ ruling placed her stamp of approval on an official recommendation that she reject the ballot referendum. Her decision will now return to the Maine Superior Court for approval, where the ballot question committee, Maine Girl Dads, will have a final chance to keep their initiative on the ballot.
The Superior Court will either uphold Bellows’ decision, remand it for further consideration, or overturn her decision and place the petition on the ballot.
Petitioners will have the opportunity to gather more signatures if the court upholds the decision. That would allow them to potentially put the question on the ballot in 2027, though not 2026.
After announcing the decision, Bellows gave a press conference, where she explained that she believes two out-of-state petition circulators gathering signatures failed to follow Maine law, thus invalidating the signatures they collected.
Bellows refused to take a question from The Maine Wire during the conference, though she took questions from other news outlets.
The initiative, officially titled “An Act to Designate School Sports Participation and Facilities by Sex,” would have allowed Mainers to vote on whether they want to bar males from girls’ sports and private spaces such as bathrooms and locker rooms.
Recent polling from Pan Atlantic found that voters would have supported the referendum by a ten-point margin.
In March, Bellows ruled that Maine Girl Dads had submitted 71,033 valid signatures, exceeding the 67,682 required, and that their referendum could appear on the ballot.
After Bellow’s decision, however, opponents filed a legal challenge against Maine Girl Dads, claiming that their petition circulators improperly gathered signatures and that enough signatures were improperly gathered to invalidate the referendum.
“There were circulators who never checked the box agreeing to submit to the laws of the state in the signature-gathering process,” said Bellows during her press conference.
Bellows’ reversal came after a contentious hearing on the challenge, which included testimony from witnesses connected to Planned Parenthood and the Maine People’s Alliance, both organizations that have endorsed Bellows’ gubernatorial campaign.
Bellow’s decision also raises conflict of interest concerns since, as a gubernatorial candidate, she could potentially appear on the same ballot as the question that is likely to drive conservative turnout.
This is not the first time Bellows has attempted to bar something or someone from the ballot by a unilateral decision. Prior to the 2024 election, she attempted to bar President Donald Trump from the ballot, but he was eventually allowed back on due to a Supreme Court decision.
Be very careful how you vote.
Think, do you want her to be he next governor of Maine?
Typical of her. Ignore the law and do as she wishes. It seems the democrat way these days.
maybe , just maybe referendum ballots are harder to manipulate as they are yes or no questions …………… just a thought ……
Unbelievable .
Unbelievable .
3 opponents ( as*holes all ) sue to overturn the will of sixty thousand parents and Bellows lets them win .
Un fucking Believable .
When is Shenna Bellows out? Not soon enough! Way to disgrace girls…hopefully no
one gets hurt in the meantime, sue sue sue (and not the name Sue). How about
transgender teams? Not enough to make even one team! We are going against the opposite sex for a miniscule few who are confused/brainwashed by our educators/media. Shame on you! Vote Red and Save our Girls!
Straight up corruption.
Nothing but lies.
The court needs to put this back on the poll.
We NEED to get some Republicans elected in November to break up this corrupt regime controlling our state.
Seriously, we need some tough ass Republicans to fight back….8 years of this 1 party rule bullshit….it needs to end.
Oh and Shanna…you suck. How can you sleep at night? Seriously, you are one very corrupt individual.
You can’t hate these people enough.
This is gonna clear the way for a lot of things, most they won’t like
If you took the best part of Platner and Bellows brain and inserted it in a 🐦 Pidgeon the poor bird would fly backwards.
Never been a stronger call for a Republican Governor…
I live in Cumberland County lass than 5 miles from downtown Portland. I never once saw one of these petitions circulated in Maine’s most populous County. What were the people behind this referendum thinking. It should have passed easily unless it was deliberately sabotaged from within.
She is one weirdo. People that think like her are mentally impaired. She’s a disgrace to woman.
I love how the flatlander is bringing in the prejudice of “out of state“ individuals circulating the petition. The woman really needs to look in the mirror if she wants to see “out of state“…
So they didn’t check a box. Did her office explain the form to them? When I ran for the legislature many years ago, the Secretary of State’s office was very helpful to me and explaining the forms and paperwork I had to fill out, but that was old Maine.
If it’s a little technicality, like not checking a box properly, I think the defense is that her office didn’t explain the form. And then her hands are dirty. At which point it comes down to the intent of the voter. Anyone remember the hanging chads 25 years ago in Florida?
What she’s doing is subverting the Will of the voters, and she’s already had the US Supreme Court overrule her once…
Maine Democrats are scared to death having the citizens decide this issue.
What happened to Maine?
Is there a mechanism with which to impeach Bellows for incompetence?
Bellows is begging for a violent end
flexing her opinion
Is Sheena really a man?
Glaring conflicts of interest. Of course she’s going to support the organizations driving this suit. She wants to be governor at all cost.
She was never going to let this go on the ballot. And I would question if her folks didn’t slip a few signature collectors into the mix to screw up their process.
Freedom Studies – Power Play
allowing the biological boys in girls’ locker rooms referendum on the ballot is just too dangerous to Democratic election efforts — especially with such promising Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate, governor, and the legislature and accountability for eight years of one-party rule at stake.
Usually a candidate running for Governor will refrain from offending voters shortly before the election. Bellows does no such thing. It’s almost as if she knows something we don’t……
The voter fraud is already “in” for Maine’s elections….people who can’t read or understand english are going to DMV getting real IDs and even driver’s licenses and then being registered to vote…thanks to their “interpreters” and NGOs that are taxpayer paid!
I have witnessed this at the DMV in Bangor
Bellows and others (Matt Dunlap, et al) have done all they can to enable voter fraud…then same day registration to vote (like the last hour) enables people to vote…who are not even from the area or Maine. There are few checks & balances.
Shenna Bellows is a sidewinder. She doesn’t want voter I.D. But apparently referendum signature collectors are fair game especially when it will keep conservatives away from the Democrat primary. She approaches sideways looking for ways to throw the opposition off balance.
You know they cancel conservative speakers because the school cant guarantee their safety…… just saying.
Bellows said she’s following the law. What law did she follow when removing President Trump from the citizens ballots?
This is just appalling. I am so glad my granddaughters do not live in Maine.
I have heard conflicting reports as to the reasons Princess Bellows has now rejected petitions called into question and refusing to certify the global submission. Is the de minimis failure to check a required box, the sole reason for rejecting specific circulator’s submissions? The petition vetting process starts with the municipal clerks who accept the petitions from the circulators obtained from their voter population. Those clerks then inspect the petitions for any sign of impropriety such as clearly alternative signatures to a known voter on their registration card. Those clerks make other content observations, and I wonder if they noticed an unchecked box if they would not have brought it to the circulator’s attention? Those clerks have historically uncovered voter fraud and report that upon discovery to the SOS along with the suspect petitions. This would have happened early in the timeline giving the Princess potentially forewarning of suspect submissions. If so, and the SOS sat on such info but clued special interests such as the one’s noted in this article, the eleventh-hour challenges may have been orchestrated to all but eliminate the potential for the petition organizers to cure the found defects with additional signatures. Well don’t rely on Maine’s top legal authority to figure it all out as who knows who was in the room when it all got cooked up, if it happened, just speculating out loud. Think about it and how we all have watched politicians act badly in order to gain or keep power. Great storyline for the Wire.
Hello boys, I’m back
I wonder what would happen if 67,682 people showed up at her office?
Repeal the 14th.
this AFTER she gave the signatures the OK – where were the challanges then?? and why is she and her office not held accountable – smells…….