(The Center Square) — Democratic online fundraising platform ActBlue has been fined $100,000 by Maine’s campaign finance regulators for missing a deadline to disclose its contributions.
The Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices approved the fine Wednesday after rejecting a request from ActBlue Maine to waive the penalty for missing the July 15, 2025 deadline to report $1.2 million worth of donations made during the proceeding fundraising quarter. The filing, which included contributions to Maine’s Democratic candidates and committees during the second quarter, was more than two weeks late, regulators said.
The commission was initially considering a fine of up to $683,731 — which would’ve been the largest in its regulatory history — but ultimately reduced it, citing the group’s “exceeding cooperative” efforts to submit the paperwork despite processing errors and staffing issues.
In a report to commissioners, the agency’s staff said the “informational harm” to the public from ActBlue’s late filing was “reduced somewhat” because some of the contributions to Democratic candidates and committees received by the fundraising group during the second quarter of 2025 were also disclosed by the candidates or committees in their own campaign finance reports.
Commission staff noted that ActBlue’s July quarterly report contained a $4,150 contribution from writer Stephen King to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Hannah Pingree on April 23 for next year’s primary and general election. While ActBlue filed its report two weeks late, the public could still access information about the contribution on Pingree’s campaign finance report, commission staff wrote.
In August, ActBlue Maine wrote to regulators urging them grant a waiver of the “unprecedented” penalty or a “very significant reduction” in the proposed fine for its “inadvertently late” filing. The group cited the state filing system’s “long delays in processing data errors and generating result reports” for delaying its filing.
“Unlike instances in the MECF penalty appeal record that show significant reductions despite filers’ inattention or completely missed filing deadlines, ActBlue worked in good faith before the deadline to make a timely filing. System errors unique to this filer’s massive data counts exacerbated the problem,” George Gilmer, ActBlue Maine’s treasurer, wrote in a Aug. 21 letter to the agency. “Equitable treatment under applicable Maine law is all we ask.”
The commission staff report said it “appreciates that ActBlue needed to file campaign finance or tax reports in 15 other jurisdictions which may have required hiring an outside compliance firm to assist its permanent staff.”
“We would urge the Commission not to put too much weight on this factor, however,” they wrote. “Candidate and ballot question campaigns in Maine are often short-staffed. ActBlue is a large nonprofit that should be expected to obtain sufficient staffing to get the job done on time in all jurisdictions.”
