Maine Citizens for Clean Elections
For any bills relating to the Maine Clean Elections Act (MCEA) and other campaign finance reform, we testify with our sister organization Maine Citizens for Clean Elections. Since 1995, MCCE has fought for, strengthened, and defended Clean Elections. We work to ensure that Maine’s campaign finance laws, elections, and government serve the public interest, both in principle and in practice. Learn more here.
The League is deeply committed to reforming our nation's campaign finance system to ensure the public's right to know, combat corruption and undue influence, enable candidates to compete more equitably for public office and allow maximum citizen participation in the political process.
The League of Women Voters was a founding member of the coalition that worked to gather signatures to pass the Maine Clean Election Act in 1996. And we were again a lead partner in the successful ballot initiative to restore Clean Elections in 2015. Now we work closely with our allies at Maine Citizens for Clean Elections to reform political action committees and limit the influence of special interests on privately-funded candidates.
131st Legislature (2022-24)
PASSED! LD 1966 — Expanding Clean Elections: This bill would include Clean Elections for District Attorney races. We know that Clean Elections encourages more people to run for office and allows them to serve without being beholden to big donors or special interests.
The 131st Legislature (2023-2024) was marked by the unfortunate repeal of the newly-enacted corporate contribution ban. The ban on corporate contributions to legislators and leadership PACs went into effect Jan 1, 2023, and there was quickly a backlash from the regulated community. Powerful forces in the Maine Legislature combined to roll back this critical reform. Due to a combination of confusing guidance from the Ethics Commission and misunderstanding by national donors, the ban was thought to not allow contributions from national PACs to the caucus PACs (despite the intention to exempt caucus PACs from the ban). This, combined with a deep reliance on leadership PACs, led to a repeal bill, LD 726, introduced by Republican Senator Jeff Timberlake, that was quickly supported by many legislative Democrats and organizations which contribute to the caucus PACs. MCCE opposed the repeal, and was able to secure an instruction to the Ethics Commission to propose new bill language for 2024 which would allow a more narrowly-constructed ban on contributions to legislators and leadership PACs. The Ethics Commission did bring forward this report, but no bill was introduced during the 131st legislative session.
A success of the 131st Legislature was the passage of LD 833, which placed limits on contributions to gubernatorial transition and inaugural committees. This legislation was a direct result of our work on the 2015 referendum, and the disclosure of transition and inaugural spending in 2018 and 2022.
132nd Legislature (2025-26)
Find more information about our efforts to fight big money in politics at our Legislative Priorities page. You can also check out the testimony that we have submitted during the current legislative session.