Attorneys for U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin are asking the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston to prevent the state of Maine from sending to Congress a certification that says Jared Golden won November election in the 2nd Congressional District.
Lee Goodman, the Republican congressman’s Washington, D.C., attorney, along with Poliquin’s legal team in Bangor, filed an emergency motion Tuesday for an injunction to keep U.S. Rep.-elect Jared Golden, a Democrat, from being sworn in and serving while an appeal of U.S. District Judge Lance Walker’s ruling against Poliquin last week is pending.
Golden is expected to be seated in the U.S. House as part of a new Democratic majority in January after beating Poliquin, who was seeking a third term. The race was decided by a ranked-choice count that survived Poliquin’s constitutional challenges in federal court in Maine.
On Thursday, Walker issued a 30-page decision against Poliquin in a lawsuit that sought to invalidate the ranked-choice voting process approved by Maine voters in 2016 and again earlier this year. Poliquin requested that Walker call for a new election. The day after Walker’s, Poliquin called off the recount he had requested, which was already underway at the Maine Secretary of State’s office in Augusta.
The emergency motion filed Tuesday says that Walker “sidestepped the explicit questions presented, often casting the questions at a more superficial level of analysis.”
The motion argues that if a certificate of election is signed and sent to Washington, D.C, before the appellate court considers the claims that ranked-choice voting is unconstitutional and violates the Voting Rights Act, Poliquin and the other plaintiffs will permanently be deprived of “the ability to vindicate their constitutional rights to a constitutionally compliant election and election results.”
Goodman, the lead attorney for Poliquin’s legal team, has asked the court to hear the case on an expedited schedule and to issue a decision Friday. The attorneys argued in their 1st Circuit motion for the same remedy they did in federal court in Maine — a new election that is run as traditional runoff elections are in other states.
Golden was certified the winner in 2nd Congressional District after he ended the recount, according to the Secretary of State’s office. That is different than the certificate of election the U.S. House of Representatives is to receive before a representative takes the oath of office.
Gov. Paul LePage has said he cannot issue a certificate of election to be sent to Congress because of the pending litigation, according to his spokeswoman Julie Rabinowitz.
“We presented the governor with a certificate of elections for Jared Golden,” Dunlap said Tuesday. “I haven’t heard anything back about that. The indication I’ve had indirectly is that [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi would be just as happy with my signature to certify it.”
This story will be updated.
This article originally appeared on www.bangordailynews.com.
