Maine's York County pro-casino group appeals petition rejection

Matt Dunlap, the current Secretary of State for Maine, has declared more than 55,000 signatures submitted by the Horseracing Jobs Fairness invalid. The campaign, which is led by Las Vegas casino mogul Shawn Scott and his sister, had gathered a total of 91,294 signatures. As mentioned above, it petitions for the construction of a casino in York County, which is to be managed by Mr. Scott himself.

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The filed lawsuit alleges that Mr. Dunlap’s office had not verified every single notary’s signature but had reviewed a representative sample of all signatures submitted.

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Under the state laws, the campaign needed a total of 61,123 signatures by residents so as for it to qualify for the November ballot. However, Mr. Dunlap’s office considered valid only 35,518 of all the signatures gathered.

Horseracing Jobs Fairness filed on Friday a lawsuit in the Kennebec County Superior Court. The York County group argued that inconsistent and arbitrary standards had been applied by the Secretary of State’s office when reviewing the signatures and that no explicit guidelines on the verification of a signature’s authenticity had been provided.

The signatures had been gathered by Olympic Consulting, owned by former Maine lawmaker Stavros Mendros. Mr. Mendros himself had been among the signers and notaries of the petition for the operation of a casino in York County.

The filed lawsuit alleges that Mr. Dunlap’s office had not verified every single notary’s signature but had reviewed a representative sample of all signatures submitted. When it had found an irregularity in that sample, it had decided to invalidate all of the signatures signed by a given notary. Horseracing Jobs Fairness claims that this practice is against state regulations.

Mr. Dunlap said that they had done their due diligence in examining the petitions and that they were confident the court would uphold their decision. The official also pointed to two main reasons why they had decided to reject the signatures. He explained that some of those had belonged to people who had not been registered as voters. Others had been rejected as a given circulator’s or notary’s signature on the oath had not matched with the ones on file forms with the state.