John,

We are fighting hard to repeal Ranked Choice Voting for this year’s Presidential election and you need to know how this week’s developments may jeopardize this work.

First, the Maine Legislature has adjourned a month early. The coronavirus situation offered a reason to cut the legislative session short. Not only does this mean that some politicians seeking higher office will start their campaigns early, but it forces us to turn in our 63,000 signatures a month earlier than planned.

Second, our original plan included collecting signatures at town meetings and at polling places during the June primary. But Governor Mills has declared a State of Civil Emergency, giving her sweeping powers—including the power to reschedule town meetings and run the June primary by absentee ballot only, if she chooses.

As you know, when the Democrats in the Legislature passed the bill to force ranked choice voting in presidential elections, Janet Mills found a clever way to keep ranked choice voting out of her party’s primary.

Now Janet Mills has a way to make it harder for us to repeal ranked-choice voting in not only presidential primary elections but in future November presidential elections as well.

Complicating the process even more, social distancing means we must take extra precautions when we collect signatures.

We cannot wait until we know how Governor Mills will choose to run the June elections. That will be too late.

We now only have 90 days to collect signatures, and the clock is ticking.

We can do this.

We’ve drawn up a new game plan, and we are putting it in motion, but it’s going to cost money.

We have taken this fight to keep ranked choice out of the presidential elections seriously. Our team is working hard, and we gathered a lot of the signatures we need on Super Tuesday. But it is not nearly enough.

This is a central, critical piece of our mission for the entire 2020 election cycle. You know what is at stake.

Extreme, liberal special interests who spent millions of dollars pushing Ranked Choice Voting onto Maine will do anything they can to keep this system in place for this year’s Presidential election.

In the past week, many things have changed.

However, the principal of one person, one vote should not change in the face of any crisis.

Help me meet this new challenge. Your donation right here, right now will put needed resources into this central piece of our 2020 election effort.  Contribute here.

This is a very special request.

I need your help with a donation of $25 for us to buy packages of pens, $50, $100, $250 or more to help us cover team travel as we now have to work even harder to get to the locations necessary to get signatures.

You can contribute right now, here.

Time is literally of the essence.

Every dollar contributed will help us get this done and fight back against ranked choice voting. Please contribute here.

We must protect Maine’s Presidential elections and turn the tide on ranked-choice voting.

Thank you for all that you do.

Sincerely,


Dr. Demi Kouzounas
Chair
Maine GOP