Will the Citizens of Maine Become the First to Overturn a Mandatory Vaccine Law by Popular Vote?

On May 24, 2019, Maine’s House of Representatives passed a bill (LD798) removing religious and philosophical vaccine exemptions to block Maine residents from getting an education in a public, private, parochial or trade school or enrolling in educational courses online. The bill was strongly opposed by grassroots health freedom groups and passed the state Senate by only one vote.  Unless it is vetoed by Maine voters in a ballot vote on Mar. 3, 2020, the new law will go into effect on Sept. 1, 2021. Mainers for Health and Parental Rights, a political action committee (PAC), filed paperwork with the state for a veto ballot referendum that would overturn the vaccine exemption repeal. In September 2019, the campaign filed 95,871 raw signatures, of which 79,056 were valid, exceeding the minimum of 63,067 signatures needed. On October 17, 2019, Maine Secretary of State Dunlap announced that the veto referendum qualified to appear on the ballot at the statewide election on March 3, 2020.

People’s Veto of Government-Mandated Vaccine Law Officially Qualifies for March Ballot in Maine

We are thrilled to announce that we have officially made the ballot! The people of Maine will be voting yes in March to reject this overreaching and punitive law pushed through our legislature by Big Pharma! The Maine Secretary of State’s Office notified Mainers for Health and Parental Rights (MHPR) on Thursday that it has certified the petition to repeal the government-mandated vaccine law that was passed by the Maine legislature and will be placing it on the March ballot. According to the Secretary of State, the vote to repeal the law will be Question 1. LD798 was a hotly contested bill in the Maine legislature that ultimately passed by one vote. 85% of the testimony provided at the public hearing were Mainers who opposed the bill. The bill would eliminate the religious and philosophical exemptions for vaccines and would apply to preschool, K-12 students in public, private, parochial and online schools, higher education as well as daycare and healthcare employees.

93,000 People in Maine Sign Petition to Veto New Vaccine Bill Taking Away Parental Rights

On Friday, September 18, 2019, Mainers for Health and Parental Rights held a press conference at the Capitol of Maine to announce they had obtained 93,000 signatures to support their grass-roots effort, Veto 798 Maine. According to their website, 798 is: "a bill that was pushed through the legislature despite overwhelming opposition from the citizens of Maine, and then quietly signed into law by Governor Mills in May of 2019. LD798 eliminates religious and philosophical exemptions to vaccination, prohibiting parents, staff and healthcare workers from exercising their right to decline one or more vaccines required by schools and employers. If Maine citizens do not comply with the new law, they face expulsion from all public, private, parochial and online schools and will be terminated from employment." To get the "Peoples Veto" on the ballot for March, 2020, they were required to obtain 64,000 signatures from Maine residents within 90 days, September 18th. With 800+ volunteers, they obtained over 93,000 signatures - nearly 7% of the population of Maine. The people of Maine will now apparently have the opportunity to vote and veto this law next March.

Medical Doctor to Maine Legislators: Diseases Persist Due to Vaccine Failure – Not Unvaccinated

My name is Dr. Meryl Nass. I am here today to oppose LD798 and support LD987. I am a physician in Ellsworth, Maine. I graduated from MIT and the University of Mississippi School of Medicine. In 2010, I was the chair of a commission established by you, the legislature, “to protect the lives and health of members of the Maine National Guard.” I have testified to 6 Congressional committees, primarily on anthrax vaccine and Gulf War Syndrome, and the permanent injuries suffered by service-members who received military vaccines of questionable quality. There is no crisis of infectious diseases caused by lack of vaccinations, here in Maine or in the rest of the United States. The rates of vaccine preventable diseases are approximately the same as always. I have attached the official statistics, so please check me on this! According to the CDC, effective vaccine exemption rates in Maine are not higher than they have been, and they are consistently better than the US average. The truth, not widely known, is that immunocompromised children are not catching diseases from their unvaccinated classmates, and they are not dying. Look at the numbers. The diseases that persist and have been in the news remain a challenge, simply because the vaccines have a high failure rate–not because of the unvaccinated.