It takes a surfeit of sympathy really to feel badly for a Member of Congress, but when one votes for a bad-sounding bill for a good reason watching them struggle to explain themselves makes for one of those rare occasions.
Because they are political animals, congressmen and women intentionally engineer legislation in such a way that it is rarely “clean” and almost always comes with strap-hanging compromises. Direct democracy should be simpler, right?
If Question 1 on next week’s ballot is any indication, it isn’t.
A citizens’ initiative, Question 1 at its core calls for a voter ID requirement in Maine — not dissimilar from the way election officials in countries all over the world ask voters to prove they are who they say they are before handing them ballots. An overwhelming percentage of Mainers support such a measure. If left there, the outcome of Tuesday’s vote would not be in much doubt.
But being citizens and not political spinmeisters, the organizers of the Yes on 1 campaign got a little over their skis in drafting a question that also includes stricter controls on absentee ballots. That left a big loophole big enough for the measure’s opponents to drive not just a truck, but a whole convoy of disinformation.
And the party that once howled and beat its chest about “disinformation” — and even tried fleetingly to create a ‘czar’ to combat it — is now trafficking in what old-fashioned types call propaganda. More ironically still, they’re doing so with an intensity that would make Josef Goebbels blush.
Maine Democrat Party Chair Charlie Dingman led the chorus months ago when he opined that, should Question 1 pass, his party would loses as many as 15,000 votes. Conveniently, that is number significantly higher than the collective margin by which Dems have, for about a decade, won elections to control the state legislature.
So it becomes easy to see why, for them, this is an existential question.
If enacted, Question 1 would eliminate the process of automatically sending absentee ballots to voters year on year, end telephone requests for ballots and limit the number of drop-boxes to more manageably-observed sites. None of this amounts to eliminating absentee ballots, though it might require absentee voters to be a bit more proactive.
[RELATED: Maine Woman Discovers Hundreds of Election Ballots in Amazon Package as State Considers Voter ID]
Given the still not wholly explained appearance of 250 ballots in the Amazon package of a Newburgh resident (who hadn’t ordered them) earlier this month, tighter controls on ballots doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.
But according to U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner, Republicans know their policies are unpopular and that’s why they’re trying to take away your right to vote. Because democracy is in peril. Project 2025. And, oh yeah, the Russians. If you need to have this all spelled out further, find the woman standing in the corner of the room talking to herself while drooling, she’s got the “facts.”
Nowhere in any of the breathless advocacy against Question 1 has anyone mentioned voter ID, which is funny because that’s the whole point. Up and down Maine’s Gold Coast, one sees plenty of “hand-painted signs” to save absentee voting. Platner has recently made it his cause de guerre and instructed his volunteers to spend this weekend knocking on doors to get out the no vote. Not a bad drill for a fledgling army, frankly.
Yet it won’t “save” democracy — it will only help Democrats.
[RELATED: Breaking Down the Disproportionate Amounts Raised and Spent on Question 1 So Far This Year]
As The Maine Wire reported yesterday, the No on 1 campaign has already out-raised and out-spent the initiative’s backers by a margin of nearly 4:1, and this well-oiled operation is being field marshaled by former Gov. John Baldacci campaign manager and Portland lobbyist David Farmer. The closer one looks at the facts, the more the “grassroots” begin to resemble astroturf, but hey, that’s business.
Despite this disproportionate array of resources and hawkers against the voter ID question, a UNH poll last week found Mainers pretty evenly split. Should it succeed against daunting odds, it would be good news for democracy, actually, because it would suggest voters can see through the fog of deflection and are, actually, kind of smart.
Is that just wishful thinking? Maybe.
