The ‘November’ Vote

By Paul Mills

Off to the polls we go and indeed – with the advent of early absentee voting – many vicariously if not otherwise have already gone. As with many of the issues on our recent off-year election menu we are summoned not so much by our leaders but by our peers: over 57,000 of them who have invoked either the Initiative or People’s Veto for three of the four measures. Were it not for a somewhat unassuming constitutional amendment all the questions would owe their presence on the ballot to citizen petitions. Without them, we might not have needed to convene an election at all.

Maine’s 29th People’s Veto Vote:
Headlining the ballot this year is a “People’s Veto” measure seeking to overturn the legislature’s recent vote to do away with same day voter registration. What makes the “People’s Veto” a bit more unusual than most other citizen initiatives is that it seeks to arrest implementation of a law before it goes into effect. For that reason it’s one that gives petition circulators only 90-days after the legislature’s late spring adjournment to file the 57,000 signatures, an effort that’s especially daunting during the summer tourist season in Maine, when such petitions are ordinarily required to be circulated. It’s a reason why a People’s Veto effort doesn’t ordinarily make it onto the ballot in the first place.

Recent People’s Veto efforts have met with a much higher level of success. This is due in part to the more easily aroused Recession plagued electorate. It is due to the fact that higher gas prices have kept more Mainers closer to home and thus more easily accessible to petition circulators in the summer months.

Indeed, this year we’re greeted with the fourth Peoples Veto on the ballot in as many years. Not since 1929, when Mainers threw out a gas tax increase (Prices were perceived to be excessive then too!) have so many been concentrated in such a short time. The most recent have covered an array of subjects including the sales and income tax, gay marriage, and the Dirigo health beverage tax.

Overall, only ten of the 29 bills to make it onto the ballot by a Peoples Veto petition have occurred in the last 70 years. Before that, 19 appeared in just the previous 31-years alone. One reason why its use had abated was a 1948 constitutional amendment that in effect more than doubled the signatures necessary to invoke the process. A further occasion for its disuse has been – at least until recently – a realization by the legislature that major tax adjustments would be passed only by a two-thirds house and senate vote, an outcome that pre-empts the use of the People’s Veto by triggering an immediate effective date.

Most People’s Veto elections like other referenda plebiscites can be difficult for pre-election polls to predict. That’s because unlike a candidate election there is no political party to which one can explicitly anchor the result. This year’s People’s Veto on moving up the deadline for voter registration might be different, however. There are party overtones. Republican leadership generally back the change and Democratic activists, who helped spearhead the petition drive, are against doing away with same day registration. Voters unaffiliated with either party who in Maine make up the largest potential voting bloc may hold the balance of power even though they are less likely to vote, especially in an off year election.

One further quick note on this: because the filing of the People’s Veto petitions had the effect of suspending the new law, those wishing to vote on it can still register and vote on the same day.

The 54th and 55th Citizen Initiatives
The second – and in recent decades the most common – method of state-wide petitioning is the “Citizen Initiative.” Unlike the “Peoples Veto” it seeks to give us a new law the legislature has failed to pass rather than to veto one lawmakers have enacted. Both procedures require signatures of voters equal to 10 percent of the number cast in the most recent gubernatorial election, now over 57,000. 
 In the same 31-year era from 1910 to 1941 when we had 19 People’s Vetoes, however, we had only six Citizen Initiatives. We have now had 50 of them since 1941. Forty-two of them have been in just the last thirty years, virtually a cottage industry. Voters in the first decades of the 20th century were perhaps more reactive than pro-active, more prone to stop from going into effect laws they didn’t like rather than propose new ones they did. Another recent stimulus has been substantial out of state funding for paid signature gatherers.

Several tax cap initiatives including 2004’s Palesky, the 2006 TABOR and 2009 TABOR II, have dotted the landscape as have measures to stop nuclear power, curtail clear cutting, and expand legalized gambling, the subject of both this year’s Citizen Initiatives.

Voting this time marks the seventh and eighth vote in 11-years on a gambling issue. So far, opponents have had the upper hand, winning four out of the last six contests.

Proponents of this year’s two measures for three new outlets no doubt are interpreting last year’s narrow approval (by less than a percentage point) for the Oxford County casino as a wedge referendum, a toe in the door that should be viewed as justification for more of them. Opponents, including some near existing facilities, may view the market as threatened with saturation if approved.

As Maine votes during the coming weeks on these measures we’re reminded also of how unique our situation is. We’re one of only three states east of the Mississippi that allows either the People’s Veto or Citizen Initiative and the one among these that has the fewest procedural barriers to them. It may be a reason why we have so many of them and why they have almost pre-empted the ballot for this year’s elections.

Paul H. Mills is a Farmington attorney well known for his analyses and historical understanding of Maine’s political scene. He can be reached by e-mail: pmills@myfairpoint.net