Mainers overwhelmingly pass campaign finance reform that may never become law

By Michael Shepherd, Bangor Daily News Staff

Maine voted resoundingly on Tuesday to pass Question 1, which would cap unlimited contributions to certain political committees but may be unconstitutional.

The yes side had 73.6 percent of votes to 26.4 for the no side when the Bangor Daily News and its national partner, Decision Desk HQ, called the race at 4:55 a.m. Wednesday.

Question 1 would reshape Maine’s political system by only allowing individuals and other entities to donate $5,000 per year to committees that make so-called independent expenditures for or against candidates for office. These contributions are unlimited under Maine and federal law, while there are stricter limits on direct donations to campaigns.

The referendum is the brainchild of Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, whose Equal Citizens nonprofit largely underwrote the Maine campaign by financing a $1 million signature drive. It pitched the idea as a narrowly crafted way to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2010 decision to strike down limits on corporate political efforts.

In the decade afterward, non-party outside groups spent $4.5 billion on U.S. elections compared with just $750 million over the prior two decades, according to OpenSecrets. This trend has filtered down to local politics in Maine, where the $5.4 million spent by outside groups to influence the 2024 legislative races exceeds the $5 million spent by all campaigns combined.

Yet Question 1 looks likely to face legal roadblocks. The Massachusetts attorney general declined to put the question on the ballot there in 2022, arguing it was unconstitutional. Other Maine referendums have been deemed illegal by courts after passage, including one three years ago that aimed to block a hydropower corridor through western Maine.