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 threatens to steal the freedom to vote from many of these citizens.
Concealed behind layers of dark money fronts funding Question 1 are far-right billionaires and Christian nationalists who fueled the rise of President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. Tracking and following dark money can feel like a medieval archaeological dig.
More than 90% of the funds raised to support Question 1—over half a million dollars—come from a Washington, D.C., dark money operation called the RSLC PAC. This PAC is solely funded by the Republican State Leadership Committee, which 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. Looking back to 2022, there was $1.5 million from The Concord Fund, also controlled by Leo.
An additional $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 the principal officer of Dinner Table Action PAC. The For Our Future PAC is the largest contributor to Dinner Table Action PAC, giving $100,000. For Our Future depends on Leo’s Concord Fund for nearly all its funding.
Much of the money Leo deploys can be traced to the Marble Freedom Trust. In 2020, billionaire Barre Seid donated $1.6 billion to Marble to enable Leo to expand his power over American politics.
President Trump assigned Leo to place right-wing jurists Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court. Leo has reportedly acted as a “matchmaker” between radical billionaires and justices Thomas, Alito, and Roberts.
The Roberts Court has delivered our elections into the hands of billionaires through its Citizens United line of cases. It gutted the Voting Rights Act and removed the courts’ role in protecting voters from unfair redistricting schemes. The RSLC PAC pioneered partisan redistricting, and recently Trump pushed the Texas state government to conduct a rare mid-decade redistricting to secure more congressional seats for MAGA.
The Trump regime has even sued Maine to obtain voters’ personal information. The Brennan Center for Justice states, “there is a concerted White House effort to interfere in future elections.” One facet of this effort is Trump’s executive order attempting to prevent states from counting absentee ballots—even where state law, as in Maine, allows their counting. It is important to note that the president lacks this power.
Heather Cox Richardson writes that Trump’s 2021 election-denying lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, suggested that Trump could proclaim “a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States” to assert “emergency powers to protect the federal elections going forward,” thereby grabbing authority from the states, which constitutionally hold these powers.
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 to 2025, there were only two cases of voting irregularities in Maine, both in 2010—and 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, either in person or by absentee ballot.
https://www.sunjournal.com/2025/10/17/dark-money-clouds-circle-maines-voter-id-question-opinion/
