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There you have it.
After wasting taxpayer dollars to drag the names of 206 hardworking University of Maine system students through the mud for alleged “voter fraud,” Maine Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster doesn’t just have egg on his face — it seems he has raided the whole chicken farm.
In case you aren’t familiar, in 2010 Maine Republicans campaigned on a promise of job creation and putting Mainers back to work. When they arrived in Augusta, they must have done all they could to spur private sector job growth and invest in proven job creators like the University of Maine System, right?
This isn’t your dad’s Republican Party.
Instead of working to make sure college students have opportunities to stay in Maine after they graduate, Maine Republicans decided it was better to invest ample amounts of time and resources into making sure college students and other hardworking Mainers had an even more difficult time voting.To get the measure to pass, they had to spin it off as an attempt to “ease the burden” on town clerks who needed to verify voter registrations submitted on election day.
But good ol’ Charlie Webster just couldn’t stick to the talking points.
Instead of trying to talk about difficulty for town clerks, Webster started a witch hunt, accusing students of committing voter fraud and trying to intimidate out-of-state students by stating they couldn’t legally, morally or ethically vote here in Maine.
Too bad for Charlie, the Republican Secretary of State’s report cleared all 206 names on the list.
Webster’s arguments have become so irrational and have veered so far from the original message of “ease in the process” that he has resorted to authoring rambling opinion pieces in The Maine Campus for the sole purpose of taking students to task for their motor vehicle registrations.
Here’s the plain truth: If you’re an out-of-state college student, just so long as you are an American citizen and of legal voting age, you can vote in Maine.
Period.
Just because you aren’t personal friends with Charlie or you haven’t lived here for 10 years does not make you ineligible to vote. It’s a shame that Webster simply wasn’t upfront about his decision to suppress the college vote. After all, he lauded the decision of the University of Maine in Farmington College Republicans to reserve and park vans designed for shuttling students to the polls in 2010 as the right thing to do.
Maine’s same-day voter registration law works and has worked for 38 years. Old Mainers have the right attitude — “If it ain’t broke, or can’t be fixed with a can of WD-40, don’t fix it.” With some of the highest voter participation rates in the nation, Maine’s law works perfectly well.
Same-day voter registration is about ease and right now, we have enough to worry about. Working families and college students are busy, whether balancing kids or classes, trying to pay the tuition bill or putting gas in their vehicles. The ease of walking into the polls on election day and registering right there is convenient for all, even with the mounting obligations accompanying the average Mainer’s hectic day.
Earlier this year, tea partier Gov. Paul LePage decided to erect an “Open for Business” sign on I-95 at the Maine-New Hampshire border. Charlie Webster and the Maine Republicans promised jobs. All they have succeeded in delivering is an attempt to suppress the college vote.
Perhaps another sign should welcome potential new workers and residents: “Students not welcome.”
Let’s send Charlie Webster a message on Nov. 8 by casting our rightful votes he worked so hard to take away.
Ben Goodman is a fourth-year political science student and the interim president of the Maine Young Democrats.
