AUGUSTA, Maine — A federal judge ruled against independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s attempt to collect qualifying signatures for the Maine ballot at primary polling locations on Tuesday.
The Monday decision from U.S. District Judge John Woodcock Jr. came the afternoon before the Super Tuesday presidential primaries in Maine and 14 other states. He ruled in favor of Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat who cited a prohibition in Maine law that bars people at the polls from trying to influence voters in a race being considered that day.
“As a practical matter, it makes eminently good sense for the law, as interpreted by Secretary Bellows, to restrict candidate solicitations from inside voting locations when the office being sought is on the ballot that day,” Woodcock wrote in a 36-page decision.
Kennedy, who is the son of the late U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and is best known for anti-vaccine activism, sued Bellows in February after his campaign claimed her office initially gave it the go-ahead to collect signatures at the primary polls. Later on, it said the secretary of state’s office told municipal officials to bar them because of the legal provision.
At that time of the lawsuit, Kennedy’s attorneys called Bellows a “Democrat partisan hack.” She responded by saying that the law is clear and that Kennedy could collect signatures during the June legislative and congressional primaries.
Last year, Kennedy entered the presidential race as a Democrat. In October, he said he would run instead as an independent. Qualifying for the ballot alongside the Republican and Democratic candidates requires 4,000 signatures from registered voters by Aug. 1.
