Maurice T. Cunningham, J.D., Ph.D., of Damariscotta is the author of “Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization.”
In 2024, more than 370,000 Mainers, many of them elderly or disabled, voted by absentee ballot. Referendum Question 1 would steal the freedom to vote from many of them.
Concealed behind layers of dark money fronts funding Question 1 are the far-right billionaires and Christian nationalists who fueled the rise of President Donald Trump and MAGA.
Tracking and following dark money can feel like a medieval archaeological dig.
More than 90% of the funds raised to support Question 1 — over a half million dollars — comes from a Washington, D.C., dark money operation called the RSLC PAC. The PAC is solely funded by the Republican State Leadership Committee. That committee depends on cash infusions from entities controlled by Catholic activist Leonard Leo.
This year, the committee has received $650,000 from a dark money front called The Lexington Fund and $100,000 from the First Principles PAC, which is underwritten by the Lexington Fund. Both are Leo operations. Dig back to 2022 and you’ll find $1.5 million from The Concord Fund, also controlled by Leo.
Another $10,000 funding Question 1 comes from the For Our Future PAC. The principal officer of both the Question 1 committee and For Our Future is Alex Titcomb. He is also principal officer of Dinner Table Action PAC. The For Our Future PAC is the largest contributor to the Dinner Table Action PAC, giving $100,000. The For Our Future PAC depends on Leo’s Concord Fund for nearly all its funding.
A lot of the money Leo deploys can be traced to the Marble Freedom Trust. In 2020, billionaire Barre Seid put $1.6 billion into Marble to enable Leo to expand his power over American politics.
President Trump assigned Leo to put the right-wing jurists Neil Gorsuch, Bret Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett on the Roberts Court, and Leo has reportedly been a “matchmaker” between radical billionaires and justices Thomas, Alito and Roberts.
The Roberts Court has delivered our elections to billionaires with its Citizens United line of cases. It gutted the Voting Rights Act, and removed the courts’ role protecting voters from unfair redistricting schemes.
The RSLC PAC pioneered partisan redistricting. Trump recently got the Texas state government to do a rare mid-decade redistricting, to deliver more congressional seats to MAGA.
The Trump regime has sued Maine to get voters’ personal information.
The Brennan Center for Justice states “there is a concerted White House effort to interfere in future elections.” One facet is Trump’s executive order to prevent the states from counting absentee ballots, even where state law — as in Maine — allows them to be counted. (The president lacks this power).
Heather Cox Richardson writes that Trump’s 2021 election-denying lawyer Cleta Mitchell says that Trump could proclaim “a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States” so he could assert “emergency powers to protect the federal elections going forward,” grabbing that authority from the states, which exercise such powers under the Constitution.
In 2021, Trump instigated a violent insurrection to overturn the results of a free and fair election he lost.
A study by Leo’s ally the Heritage Foundation found that from 1982-2025 there were only two cases of voting irregularities in Maine, both in 2010. Neither involved absentee ballots.
Question 1 is a test of whether Mainers will surrender their freedom to have their votes counted fairly to MAGA and far-right billionaires. Vote “No” on Question 1 — in person or by absentee ballot.