Maine Public Broadcasting Network
Opponents of a casino in Oxford County have given up their recount effort. The ballot initiative passed on Election Day by a margin of less than one percent, prompting the recount. But opponents decided to call off the recount after about a fifth of the ballots were re-tallied with little change in the initial results.
The Maine Senate has passed legislation tightening the ballot initiative process. The measure requires greater disclosure of who is paying for the circulation of petitions for ballot initiatives. It also allows more time for a challenge to a petition. Sen. Bruce Bryant, an Oxford Democrat, supported the measure during floor debate.
A bill that would impose new standards governing the citizen’s initiative and people’s veto ballot process was killed today by a legislative policy committee. Democratic House Majority Whip Seth Berry, of Bowdoinham, says his bill was an attempt to bring greater accountability and transparency to the process of bringing issues to ballot, but Republican opponents saw the proposal as an attempt to complicate and discourage signature-gathering efforts.
Partisan flare-ups erupted Monday during a work session on bills sponsored by two prominent Democratic legislators who say that citizen initiatives and people’s vetoes are vulnerable to fraud and manipulation. Republican opponents of both bills see the legislation as a way to hamstring citizens who want exercise their right to influence government policies at the ballot box. State Sen. Debra Plowman says she had it with Democratic efforts to tighten up some perceived loose ends in the state’s citizen initiative laws.
Maine lawmakers are considering some measures aimed at tightening the state’s voter initiative process. The Legislature’s Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee is hearing testimony today on three measures: LD 1690 would require an electronic list of certified signatures and give potential challengers more time to look them over; LD 1692 would require petition drive organizers to let people know the amount and source of money required to implement the initiative; and LD 1730 would hike penalties for fraud. Some signatures gathered in recent drives have turned out to be bogus.
In a random drawing this morning, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap determined the order of questions that will appear on the November 3rd ballot. The four citizen-initiated questions will be on the ballot after the people’s veto question of whether to repeal the state’s newly-enacted gay marriage law.
Republican opponents of a new law that broadens the state sales tax vow to overturn it at the ballot box through a so-called “people’s veto”. But the sole political action committee set up to organize the movement has thus far failed to garner any financial support. GOP leaders, however, maintain that unlike other people’s veto campaigns with paid circulators, theirs will be a true grass roots initiative.