History
In 1908, Maine became the first state east of the Mississippi to adopt a
constitutional provision for statewide initiative and referendum. It could
not have happened without the work of the state’s foremost I&R
advocate, Roland T. Patten of Skowhegan.
In the early 1980s, Patten, editor of the Skowhegan Somerset Reporter,
was an advocate of municipal ownership of public utilities. “About 1894,”
he wrote, he “heard something of the idea [of I&R] as made use of in
Switzerland” and realized that I&R could be used in the cause of municipal
ownership.
A member of the Republican Party, he first pushed for adoption of an
I&R resolution at the Republican convention in his county. Failing there, he
became a leader of the state’s Socialist Party and lobbied all four of the
state’s major parties - Republican, Democratic, Socialist, and Prohibitionist
- to endorse I&R. In 1902 Maine Democrats adopted Patten’s I&R
resolution verbatim, and in 1903 Democratic State Representative Cyrus
W. Davis of Waterville introduced the first statewide I&R bill.
Meanwhile, Patten had founded the Initiative and Referendum
League of Maine and had allied with the state Grange and the state
Federation of Labor. In 1905 they nearly succeeded: their I&R bill got a tie
vote in the state senate. The following year all four parties endorsed I&R,
and Davis made it a central issue in his Democratic gubernatorial
campaign.
Davis lost to Republican William T. Cobb, who was lukewarm on the
issue, but the I&R League succeeded in electing more I&R supporters to
the legislature. Despite opposition from banks, timberland owners, and
railroads, the legislature passed an initiative bill without a single dissent.
However, it was not exactly what the I&R League wanted: it provided for
initiative statutes, but not constitutional amendments. The Republicans,
who controlled both houses of the legislature, forced the initiative
advocates to accept this compromise because they feared that an
initiative constitutional amendment might be used to repeal their state’s
Prohibition amendment.
Governor Cobb signed the I&R amendment on March 20, 1907, but it
still had to be ratified by popular vote before taking effect. In the 18
months prior to this vote, most of the state’s newspapers published
editorials opposing I&R, and Maine’s U.S. Senator Hale sent his constituents
copies of a vehement speech opposing it by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge
of Massachusetts. Nevertheless, voters approved I&R by a margin of more
than two to one on September 15, 1908.
The first initiative on the state ballot was a victory for the Progressives:
a law mandating the nomination of state and county candidates by
popular vote in primary elections, rather than in party conventions. It
passed by margin of more than three to one on September 11, 1911.
Only seven initiatives were on the ballot during the first 60 years of the
initiative process, and there were none during the l950s and l960s. The only
successful measure after 1911 was a 1936 statute “to prevent diversions of
the general highway fund” (to uses others than highways).
In the l970s Maine voters, like those in other states, rediscovered their
power to make laws by initiative. In 1972 they approved an initiative to
change the ballot form to eliminate party columns in order to encourage
voters to give each candidate independent consideration.
In the 1970s and 1980s, more than half of Maine’s initiatives were about
energy and environmental matters. In 1976, voters enacted a beverage
container deposit (Bottle Bill) initiative and established a state park at
Bigelow Mountain; in 1980, 1982, and 1987, they turned down proposed
initiatives to ban nuclear power, following massive “Vote No” ad
campaigns paid for by the owners of the Maine Yankee nuclear plant.
The Maine Nuclear Referendum Committee, sponsors of the nuclear ban
initiatives, won only one campaign: a 1985 initiative to require a statewide
referendum on any plan to dump low-level radioactive waste.
In 1986, consumer advocates waged a successful battle against the
local telephone company to pass an initiative outlawing local measured
service, whereby callers are charged by the minute for local calls. The
company had set a campaign spending record with its “Vote No” ads,
which featured former U.S. senator and 1972 presidential candidate
Edmund Muskie.
However, with the passage of term limits in the early 90s, state
lawmakers began a crusade against the initiative process by passing
numerous changes to the states I&R laws. One law that was passed,
prohibiting petition circulators to be paid by signature, was struck down
by the Federal Courts as a violation of the First Amendment. The case was
sponsored by the Initiative & Referendum Institute. Other new laws
designed to regulate and restrict the I&R process are likely which will no
doubt lead to additional litigation in the state.
Excerpted from the Initiative & Referendum Almanac by M. Dane Waters.