PORTLAND, Maine — Two utilities and two media organizations have filed a lawsuit over a referendum in Maine that closed a loophole in federal election law that allows foreign entities to spend money on local and state voting measures.
The three lawsuits target the proposal that voters overwhelmingly approved on November 7 to tackle foreign election influence.
The Maine Association of Broadcasters and the Maine Press Association argue that the new law, which takes effect Jan. 5, will impose a censorship mandate on news outlets, which will be required to monitor campaign ads to ensure there is no influence from a foreign government is.
Meanwhile, Central Maine Power and Versant, the state's largest electric utilities, have each filed separate lawsuits raising constitutional challenges to the law that they say violates their freedom of speech and involvement in issues that affect them.
The Maine Commission on Government Ethics and Campaign Practices is reviewing the federal complaints filed Tuesday and consulting with Attorney General Jonathan Wayne, the commission's executive director, in an email Wednesday.
The attorney general's office declined comment.
Sen. Rick Bennett, who led the effort to bring the proposal to a vote, said Wednesday that the federal lawsuits “speak volumes about the deplorable state we have reached in our politics.”
“This is something Mainers agree on. Their voices are being drowned out by these people filing the lawsuits,” he said.
The referendum, which passed by an 86% to 14% margin, bans foreign governments — or companies with 5% or more foreign government ownership — from donating to state referendum races.
The proposal was put to a vote after Hydro Quebec, a Canadian government-owned utility, spent $22 million to influence a project in Maine in which it is a partner. That hydroelectric corridor project ultimately moved forward after legal challenges.
But there are also implications for Maine-based utilities.
The law applies to Versant because it is owned by the City of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. Foreign governments also have an interest in Central Maine Power.
CMP's parent company, Avangrid, missed the mark by one measure. It is owned by a Spanish company – not the government – and minority shareholders owned by foreign governments, Norway's central bank Norges Bank and the government-owned Qatar Investment Authority, together fall under the 5% threshold.
But Qatar also has an 8.7% minority stake in Spain-based Iberdrola, which owns Avangrid and CMP, which is part of the reason why CMP claims the law is unconstitutionally vague.
Before the Maine proposal went to voters, it was vetoed by Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, who raised concerns about the proposal's constitutionality and said its broadness would silence “legitimate voices, including Maine-based businesses.” can bring.
Federal election law currently prohibits foreign entities from spending money on candidate elections, but allows such donations for local and state ballot measures.
Maine was the 10th state to close the election spending loophole when the referendum was approved, according to the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C., which supported Maine's proposal.
Bennett, R-Oxford, said other states' laws have withstood legal challenges, even though some of their definitions are stricter than Maine's.
He also said it was ironic that Versant would sue for a right it does not have in Canada. “In Canada, it is completely illegal for foreign individuals or companies to be involved in their elections,” he said.
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