AUGUSTA – A Bowdoinham woman has filed a lawsuit challenging Maine election officials’ decision to validate petitions to allow a taxpayers’ bill of rights initiative on state ballots later this year.

Kathleen McGee filed the appeal in Kennebec County Superior Court on Friday, three days after Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap validated the petitions.

McGee said the deadline to submit a minimum 50,519 signatures needed to force the referendum was Oct. 21, 2005, but that Dunlap allowed another box of petitions with 4,024 to be submitted three days later.

If the extra box had not been included, the initiative would not have qualified to be on the ballot, McGee contends.

“This sets an unhealthy precedent,” McGee said. “The integrity of the citizen initiative process is undermined if this decision is allowed to stand.”

Dunlap’s office defended the secretary’s decision, saying the courts “have consistently ruled that the Constitution and laws governing citizen initiatives should be liberally construed to facilitate the people’s exercise of their sovereign power to legislate.”

“All constitutional requirements were met,” Dunlap’s office said in a statement. The law outlining the deadline for filing “specifically references those constitutional requirements and it should be interpreted to be consistent with the Constitution.”

Dunlap has previously acknowledged that it was the second batch that put the petition drive over the minimum threshold.

McGee said she has worked with other groups representing diverse views to protect the integrity of the initiative process. Among them, she said, is Mary Adams, leader of the taxpayer bill of rights initiative.

Patterned on law in Colorado and other states, the so-called TABOR plan in Maine seeks to limit increases in state and local government spending to the rate of inflation plus population growth and require voter approval for all tax and fee increases.

A judge is to hold a hearing within 15 days of Friday’s filing.