Politics & Other Mistakes: Be afraid

6 mins read

This Halloween, if you want to scare the crap out of your favorite political activist – liberal or conservative – skip the fright mask, fake blood and glowing green goop. That stuff just makes you look like a lobbyist for some faction in the health-care debate (Woooo, Sen. Snowe, I am the ghost of Republican pre-existing conditions. Woooo, Olympia, I am the specter of Democratic deficits future. Woooo, you RINO upstart, I’m the spirit of Margaret Chase Smith, and I’m sick of being compared to you).


Al Diamon

No, if you want to see real fear in the eyes of a campaigner for the obscure cause of the moment (declare the incandescent light bulb an endangered species, ban the use of leg-hold traps in Portland coffee shops frequented by animal-rights activists, outlaw the reading of “Tobacco Road” in no-smoking areas), you’ll have to disguise yourself as something truly terrifying. Such as:

Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap.

At first glance, Dunlap may not look scary. He has that bald, middle-aged, doofus thing going on that tends to elicit comparisons with character actors who get cast as the best friend’s father in short-lived teen sitcoms on obscure networks (“Jeez, Brandee, when your old man gets, like, mad, his head gets, like, all shiny”).

Nevertheless, Dunlap is the most frightening entity the state’s political process has produced since former Green Independent gubernatorial candidate Pat LaMarche announced her support for the excise-tax cut. But unlike LaMarche, who has potential for developing a lucrative career as somebody you’d hire to endorse your opponent’s position, Dunlap doesn’t just scare away voters. He threatens to frighten the entire referendum-initiative system to death.

Part of Dunlap’s job is certifying citizen petitions seeking to put issues on the ballot. State law gives him 30 days to make sure the submitted signatures are of sufficient number – it takes just over 55,000 – and belong to registered voters, who, at the time of signing, did not reside in either a cemetery or the petition circulator’s imagination. To his credit, Dunlap takes this responsibility seriously, checking every name for accuracy and the absence of morbidity. In many states, petitions aren’t subjected to such scrutiny, relying instead on random sampling. But our boy prefers his more exacting – and more time-consuming – method.

And that’s the problem: time.

On Oct. 13, Dunlap missed the statutory one-month deadline to sort through the more than 60,000 signatures turned in by a group seeking a people’s veto of the tax-reform measure approved by the Legislature last session. Dunlap’s attitude toward his failure to fulfill his legal obligation can be summed up in two words:

So what?

“I think we are in material compliance,” he told Maine Public Radio. “We also have other constitutional obligations.”

He said he’d get around to certifying the petitions in the near future (he may already have done so by the time you read this), after which all would be well.

Unless it isn’t.

What happens if Dunlap finds the anti-tax-reform crowd had too many cadavers on its list of supporters and came up short on usable signatures? Does the people’s veto get on the ballot, anyway, because he missed the deadline? Or does it fail to go to referendum because it didn’t meet the legal standard?

The courts will have to sort that out, but in the meantime, both supporters and opponents of the initiative won’t know whether or when there’ll be a vote. Campaign planning will be impossible. And that’s hardly the most serious consequence of Dunlap’s frightening ineptness.

Let’s suppose there was a very partisan secretary of state (Dunlap is a Democrat, although that has nothing to do with the preceding phrase), who was very opposed to a proposed referendum (the people’s veto is mostly backed by Republicans, although, again, the preceding phrase is irrelevant). If the certification timeframe written into state law is meaningless, an unscrupulous secretary could delay his signature-checking until the 30 days had passed and then declare the petition drive dead because he hadn’t validated sufficient names.

Conversely, if the 30-day limit means the initiative goes on the ballot automatically, even if the name-verifying isn’t completed in time, an unethical secretary, who favored a referendum question that appeared to lack the required signatures, could deliberately dub around until after the deadline, thereby certifying the petitions by default.

Scared yet?

The law needs clarifying by the courts, and, possibly correcting by the Legislature, before Dunlap or one of his successors tortures the process to death.

In the meantime, don’t be surprised if you open the door on Oct. 31 expecting to see trick-or-treaters, only to be confronted by somebody costumed as a bald guy with a clueless look.

“No candy,” he’ll say. “I’m just here to check your signature.”

E-mail aldiamon@herniahill.net to warn me about jerks giving out veggies or granola bars. I’ve got the TP ready.

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1 Comment

  1. I see your point on the possible unreasonable delay by the Secretary of State, but if the sponsors of this referendum had a position more likely to pass in November, shouldn’t they have been able to submit the names earlier and avoid the chance of not making the ballot? If a legislative action is so disliked, the short time between the filing deadline (10 business days after adjournment of the legislative session at which the Act in question was passed) and the November vote may not be a problem. This assumes the Secretary of State is not playing games. Is the Secretary of State’s verification process “first come, first serve” on each people’s referenda? Given the limited resources of time and personnel, they could be swamped if there were many to check. This would put the more popular petitions at the front of the line. Again, I assume that the more popular a cause, the quicker the signatures will be submitted. If the mob isn’t big enough, the wait until the next ballot would be a tax on the less popular positions. Failing that one could always trust one’s elected representatives or petition the Lord with prayer.

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