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Clerk says same-day registering efficient

Ballot initiative could save 1973 law

Posted on Oct. 30, 2011, at 11:53 p.m.

When asked how the possible elimination of same-day registration would affect the way Orono handles voting, town clerk Wanda Thomas groaned.

“I don’t even want to think about that,” she said.

If you ask Thomas, a Maine law allowing voter registration on Election Day eases administrative burden in a town that, due to a large University of Maine student presence, has a “fluid” electorate. Campus residents have Precinct 2 to themselves in Orono.

At Precinct 2, the campus resident-only district, she said as many as six clerks are there at peak hours of the day to handle registration and incoming votes.

“It’s done [on Election Day] because we put the manpower there to do it,” she said.

The law establishing same-day registration, passed in 1973, was repealed by the Republican-controlled Maine Legislature in June.

LD 1376, sponsored by Speaker of the House Robert Nutting, R-Oakland, prohibited registering to vote or voting absentee in the two business days prior to elections. No Democrats voted to repeal, and only three GOP legislators broke party lines to join them. Republican Gov. Paul LePage signed the bill.

Due to a successful people’s veto effort led by Protect Maine Votes, a coalition of 23 interest groups, the law hasn’t yet taken effect. The group does not oppose the absentee voting restriction.

And whether to uphold the law will be up to Maine voters to decide on Election Day, Nov. 8. A “yes” vote on Question 1 would maintain same-day registration; a “no” vote would uphold its repeal.

David Farmer, spokesman for Protect Maine Votes, said 70,000 people registered same-day statewide in the 2009 and 2010 elections combined.

“A lot of people use it, and that’s why it’s important to protect,” he said.

‘No good reason’ to repeal

An independent Critical Insights poll released last week said 51 percent of voters polled supported reinstating same-day registration. Forty-three percent of those polled said they supported same-day registration’s repeal, while 6 percent were undecided.

“There’s no good reason to arbitrarily move a deadline back from Election Day to the Thursday before,” Farmer said. “This is a system that works to help people vote.”

But Charlie Webster, the chairman of the Maine Republican Party, said ensuring ballot security is more than a worthy goal.

“I think it’s just common sense,” he said. “If you walk in at [7:45 p.m. Election Day] and you register to vote, how are we going to know you didn’t vote in New Jersey?”

Thomas said many University of Maine students don’t understand residency requirements. She cited a large number of voter registration cards that come to her from student groups and are filled out improperly, often listing hometowns in other parts of the state or country.

“When they register to vote here, they’re really becoming an Orono resident,” Thomas said. “I don’t think there’s enough education along those lines.”

Earlier this year, Webster was at the center of a political episode Farmer called “a concerted effort to scare students into not participating” in an attempt to “obscure what’s actually on the ballot.”

“They’re talking about a phantom issue of fraud — no evidence, despite [Webster’s] best efforts and the secretary of state’s best efforts [to prove otherwise],” Farmer said.

In July, Webster gave Secretary of State Charlie Summers a list of 206 college students at the University of Maine, the University of Maine at Farmington, the University of Southern Maine’s Gorham campus and the University of Maine at Machias who he said were registered to vote both in and outside of Maine.

A subsequent investigation by Summers’ office found 77 were actually registered in two states, which Summers said in September isn’t a violation unless registrants “intentionally” fail to disclose their previous address. No cases of voter fraud were found on the list.

Afterward, however, Summers sent letters to the investigated students asking them to cancel their voter registration unless they planned to also obtain a Maine driver’s license.

“I feel like our elections are safe and secure. Charlie Webster waving his arms and talking about fraud doesn’t convince me otherwise,” Farmer said. “In fact, it’s his shenanigans that have demonstrated there hasn’t been significant fraud.”

‘We couldn’t possibly handle them’

Webster said college towns statewide would benefit from same-day registration’s repeal.

“[For] towns like Orono and Farmington and Machias and Gorham and Lewiston — it’s a tremendous financial burden to those towns,” Webster said. “And there’s no need for it when they could simply [register] in the town office.”

Thomas disputes that.

She said Orono is used to massive amounts of same-day registrants. In the 2010 gubernatorial election, 623 University of Maine students voted on-campus, according to Thomas. Approximately 500 registered that day, she said.

She said Orono is better organized to handle voter registration on Election Day than in an office setting. If they were made to register at the office, more staff may need to be hired year-round because there would be no way to gauge when registrants would come in, she said.

“All of those 500 students are not going to come down here and register to vote, and if they did, we couldn’t possibly handle them,” Thomas said.

In May, a representative of the Maine Town & City Clerks’ Association testified that the repeal of same-day registration would not be beneficial to them or voters.

“For one thing, the clerks say they don’t want it. For the other thing, elections are not about the officials who administer them,” Farmer said. “Elections are about the voters and democracy and making sure every eligible voter has the opportunity to cast [a] ballot.”

Thomas said she was stunned legislators made an issue of same-day registration.

“Frankly, I was very surprised that the legislature did that, because usually they’re the ones who want to get the vote out,” Thomas said. “I don’t really know why they decided that was a good idea.”

Farmer said that because many smaller town offices have short business hours or are open only a few days per week, registering on Election Day is a necessary thing for prospective voters.

But Webster said that argument insults the intelligence of Maine voters.

“Are the ‘yes’ folks suggesting that these people are so ignorant — are so lazy — that they wouldn’t go down two days earlier?” he said.

And Webster also called any thought that voter participation would be reduced “illogical.”

“Most people register a handful of times in their life,” he said. “If you aren’t motivated enough to go register before the election two [business] days, that’s your problem.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 30th, 2011, 11:53 pm. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.