Stifling ballot initiatives

Three bills in the legislature seek to limit citizen involvement in state government.

By Noah Bruce

It’s not everyday you find the arch-conservative Christian Coalition of Maine working hand-in-hand with tree-huggers like the Friends of the Maine Woods, artsy idealists like Maine Artists for Social Responsibility, or labor like the Maine AFL-CIO. Now that the Maine Legislature has taken aim at the citizen initiative process, however, these groups and many more have banded together under the Coalition to Protect the Referendum banner.

“There’s 60 groups that have come together,” says Paul Volle, director of the Christian Coalition of Maine, “from conservative Christians, to the toxic waste people, to [environmentalist] Jonathan Carter, groups that I stood at a podium with that I normally wouldn’t go near. The preservation of our first amendment rights has enabled us to transcend our political differences.”

John Dieffenbacher, executive director of the Maine People’s Alliance, a group that advocates citizen involvement in government and has helped organize the Coalition to Protect the Referendum, lists three bills that would limit the citizen initiative: LD 1337, which would keep petitioners outside polling places; LD 123, which would insure geographic diversity in the collection of signatures; and LD 796, which would make a retroactive building moratorium (like the sort just voted down in Portland) illegal.

According to Dieffenbacher, there were “10 or 15 other bills that limited the referendum” this legislative session, but they have since been defeated. This is not the first session Maine legislators have dealt with these kinds of bills either. “In 1997 and 1999, we helped to defeat legislation that was similar to LD 1337 and we defeated it handily,” he says. “The degree of opposition [to the referendum] and the number of bills is greater this year.” Dieffenbacher believes governor Angus King’s support of the bills — he is the initiator of LD 1337 and publicly supports LD 123 — “has helped embolden corporate interests that are hostile to the referendum.”

Volle believes “the governor and the paper industry” are seeking to limit the power of the referendum because they “are so afraid of Jon Carter, of what he can put on the ballot.”

Governor Angus King responds that he supports the checks on the referendum not because he “is fronting for the paper interest,” but because “it is in the best interest of the public.” “The primary focus of [LD 1337],” he says, “is to protect the integrity of the voting place,” from petitioners who may disrupt the voting process.

King emphasizes that the referendum was “designed as a safety valve for when the legislature won’t listen to the people,” but if used too frequently, as it was in Oregon last fall, where 26 questions crammed the ballot, it undermines the type of government created by the framers of the constitution. “An ongoing town hall is not the way our system was designed,” he says.

This raises a philosophical debate about exactly what kind of government we’d like to have here in Maine. The fact is, the United States, Maine included, was established as a representative democracy. We don’t get, and probably don’t want, a vote in every decision the government needs to make, from raising taxes to changing job titles at the Department of Health and Human Services. Theoretically, if we want a say in state government, we call our reps and badger them until they advocate for our position.

However, politicians, and government in general, have largely become disconnected from the people, and vice-versa. How many citizens even know who their reps are any more? The citizen initiative is a way for people to make changes in a society where they feel increasingly alientated from their government.

“We’re suffering in this society,” says Dieffenbacher. “People are alientanted and don’t have a place to gather and talk about issues. [Gathering in the polling place] gives people a forum to talk about issues. I find the vast majority of people enjoy this. We need more community not less. We need more opportunity not less.” The increase in referenda King points to seems to support this claim.

Volle says the Oregon referendum explosion is not relevant to Maine and is just being used by the governor as “a red herring.” Though there were only three citizen initiatives on the ballot in Maine last fall, King claims the trend is growing. “In the first 50 years in place,” he says, “I think [the citizen initiative] was used once or twice. If you plotted the number of referenda in the past twenty five years it would be a surprising upward curve.”

According to King, one problem with the referendum is that “it’s not a good way to deal with complex issues.” King explains that after the wording of a petition is accepted, “it is locked in and [petitioners] couldn’t amend it if they wanted to.” Then voters must vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ with no possibility to change any part of the measure. This is in contrast to the legislature where problematic, yet well-intentioned bills can be amended.

Volle contends that King’s views of limiting citizen participation make him an “elitist”, and “the problem with the elitist,” he says, “is that they don’t trust the common man.”

King maintains this is not true. “I don’t distrust the people,” he says “they elected me twice.”

King says the measures he favors “are a modest response to the problem, not the wholesale assault as some have characterized it.”

The Coalition to Protect the Referendum has taken the bills deadly seriously, indeed. In addition to more standard campaign tactics like lobbying and urging members to call their legislators, the organization hosted an elaborate publicity stunt on May 1. “We had a mock-funeral for the [Maine State] constitution,” says Volle. “We had a hearse, and a coffin, and a flag, and the music, and everything.”

Though Volle says three newspapers and three television stations attended the funeral, the only media coverage it received was, “a column in the Bangor Daily News and a fifteen second spot on Channel 13.” Volle believes the lack of media coverage for the event bespeaks of King’s influence. “I think the governor called in all his media favors on this one. People at the state house were all stirred up [after the funeral]. Normally, you’d have press coverage. That tells me the fix is in.”

For organizations that would use the referendum process, the most damaging bill is LD 1337, which keeps petitioners from their favorite spot to collect signatures — the polling place — thus making it more difficult to get a referendum on the ballot. In order to bring a referendum to a statewide vote, petitioners must collect signatures from 10 percent of the number of people who voted in the last gubernatorial election, currently around 42,000 signatures.

Bob Levangie, director of the Marine Action Network, which is part of the Coalition to Protect the Referendum, explains that the polling place in the best location to gather signatures because, when they are voting, people are naturally interested in talking politics. “It’s very difficult to collect signatures for a referendum because people don’t want to hear about anything political,” he says. “Collecting signatures at the polls is much easier than on the street because people are ready to talk about politics. If you do it at Shaw’s, people are not at all interested in politics.”

Originally, LD 1337 would have banned petitioners from within 250 feet of the voting booth, but the measure, also known as the Governor’s Bill after its initiator, has since been amended. However, there is some lack of agreement as to what the amendment means. According to an email sent by Dieffenbacher to supporters, the amendment would keep petitioners more than 50 feet away. However, Maine state senator Neria Douglass (D-Androscoggin County) claims this is untrue. “The amendment was to have petitioners closer than 50 feet away, only requiring them to be outside,” she says, but she says that even some legislators are confused about the nature of the amendment.

To the Coalition to Protect the Referendum, any measure that keeps petitioners outdoors is problematic as it could mean standing out in the cold to collect signatures.

“ ‘Don’t put our grandmothers out in the cold, or the snow, or the freezing rain,’ is the line we’ve been using,” says Dieffenbacher, who notes that many of the petition gatherers are older people.

But Representative Ted Heidrich, (R-Oxford), who supported the bill in committee after it was amended, says that collecting signatures should be tough. “Democracy isn’t easy,” he says. “When I go out and campaign and it’s raining, that’s not easy.”

Supporters of the bill believe the measure is necessary to keep petitioners from hassling voters. Representative Art Mayo (R-Bath), who also supported the bill in committee, told the Bangor Daily News that his constituents had complained about being intimidated, “And for everybody who tells me they’ve been intimidated, there are eight or 10 out there who don’t say it, who feel the same way.”

Dieffenbacher, however, believes there is already a mechanism in place to keep order at the polling place. “The wardens have control of the polling places, they can throw out anyone they want.” Dieffenbacher also questions why legislators have chosen to crack down on petitioners as the source of voting booth disruptions. “We want to know why they are singling out petitioners. There are other people who could potentially be disruptive. There are people selling food and people talking loudly,” he says.

Dieffenbacher also points out that petitioners are already not allowed to talk to voters before they vote, and says that in an ideal situation, petitioners are positioned near the exit of the polling place, so they only have access to voters as they are leaving.

But Heidrich says the reality is “in some of the smaller communities there’s one way out of the building,” so voters are, by necessity, encountering petitioners before they vote.

Adding a national perspective to the question, King points out that in the 26 states besides Maine with a citizen initiative process, only two allow signature gathering at the polls.

In an interview with the Phoenix, Mayo focused on another possible problem with allowing voters near the polling place. “The other thing that’s out there that has never reared its ugly head is, say you’re collecting signatures on X, and I don’t agree. I have just as much right to be in the polling place as you. If you have three or four petition gatherers and three or four on the other side, you have a lot of space taken up.”

Mayo admits that, to date, this has not been a problem, but insists that it could be in the near future. “We have had this debate for two months,” he says, “and it has heightened people’s awareness of petition gathering. I have no doubt we’re going to see requests from the opposition, and there is legally no way they can be stopped and that would create more of a problem.”

Like LD 1337, LD 123 would make it harder to get a referendum on the ballot by making it more difficult to collect the necessary signatures. Unlike LD 1337, LD 123 is a constitutional amendment and thus would require a vote from the Maine citizens before it was passed.

If it passes both the legislature and the people, the bill would require petitioners to gather signatures totaling at least five percent of the number of voters in the last gubernatorial election, from each of 10 counties. The bill originally called for this percentage from all 16 counties in Maine but was amended to 10 in committee. According to Volle, the bill would not hamper the efforts of large, well-organized groups like his Christian Coalition of Maine, but would cripple the efforts of any small group from getting a referendum on the ballot.

“When we did the peoples veto in ’96,” he says, “we got [signatures] from all 16 counties. What it does is hurt smaller groups that don’t have the base we have. This is a false barrier. That’s like saying ‘we’re not going to stop the blacks from voting, but we’re going to make a poll tax and make it so expensive.’ ”

Dieffenbacher rejects the idea behind LD 123 on the premise that legislators do not have to seek approval from different geographic areas in order to pass laws. “In the house, you need 76 votes and 18 in senate. They do not need to get any number from any of the counties . . . We’re baffled at the rationale of this. The real rationale is to restrict citizens’ ability to use the democratic process.”

According to Mayo, who sponsored the bill, and King, who is on record as supporting it, LD 123 would prevent a referendum that is clearly county specific. “With regard to LD 123,” says Mayo, “it came up over my concern with the video gambling referendum that was primarily a Scarborough Downs piece of legislation. Ninety percent of the signatures came from Cumberland County. I’m not sure that is a good thing.”

King agrees with the notion “of geographic distribution” because it prevents petitioners from “bringing a proposal forward from one area of the state, and getting all the signatures from that part, and then another part of the state having to defend itself against the referendum. This could involve issues like hunting, land use, and forestry.”

LD 796, unlike the other two bills, would not change the procedure for acquiring signatures for a petition, but it would decrease the ability of petitioners to alter development plans, by making retroactive building moratoriums illegal. An example of a retroactive moratorium is the measure that Portland voted down on May 1, which would have outlawed any building project that received its building permit after October.

The bill’s sponsor, Beverly Daggett, believes that when someone receives a building permit, they have gone through the required public process and this process should not be allowed to be “riled” by “the disgruntled minority.”

“What it does,” she says, “is prevent a citizen’s initiative to retroactively take away anyone’s rights that they have gained by going through the entire public process and obtaining a permitted project. It respects the process that anyone has gone through.”

Dieffenbacher characterizes the bill as a boon to developers, some of whom “have an arrogant lack of respect for the democratic process,” a process he believes should include the citizen’s power to prevent development.

Currently, all three bills are up in the legislative air. LD 1337 and 796 have been voted on by committee, the former with a recommendation to pass, the latter with a recommendation not to pass, but both need final revision before making it onto the floor of the house. LD 123 has been on the house’s schedule several times but has not been debated yet.

Taken together, they represent a check upon the citizens of Maine’s ability to participate in the law-making process. Whether you believe, like Paul Volle, that this is a de facto outlawing of the citizen initiative, or you side with Governor King, who believes that this simply keeps Maine from devolving into one giant town hall, depends upon your view of the citizen’s role in the government. n

Noah Bruce can be reached at nbruce@phx.com.