"Maine, the way life should be"
Is the slogan you see when entering Maine, and for many Mainers this holds true, except maybe the case of obstructionist governor Paul Lepage.
In 2016 Maine was the first state that voted in ranked-choice voting for its state and federal elections, it was a celebrated victory which Maine would be proudly paving the way for other states to hopefully follow suite in a much needed overhaul of our elections.
Whats that? Not so fast, Maine windbag governor and tRump suck up Paul Lepage and legistlators took odds with the people's choice fearing it was unfair to Republicans and stated this was against Maine's Constitution. The state Supreme Court gave an advisory opinion approving Ranked choice voting for state general elections, but not state primary and federal elections. Still not satisfied Republicans sought to put off implementation of the legislation until 2021 imposing a difficult deadline to amend the state constitution to unequivocally allow for ranked-choice voting by then or else the ranked-choice referendum would be fully repealed in 2022. This would effectively kill the bill, or so they hoped.
“I encourage the people who want to have a people’s veto to bring it in. The Supreme Court has already said it is unconstitutional, so let the courts decide,” Said Lepage
Maine has another great law in it's constitution called "The people's veto". If the people are opposed to a new Maine law Its citizens can put it up for a vote, and possibly overturn it. And that they did, with over 80,000 petitions of furious constituents who felt like their votes and choices were being ignored, the signatures are well over the 61,123 needed to get the referendum on the ballot. Some help was thanks to Phish drummer (fellow brother behind the skins) John Fishman who helped a drive to get petitions signed last month.
Mainers will vote once again for ranked-choice voting this June, it will be the 31st time using the people's veto since 1910, and the first time (yes another first!) voting on a law in which the state legistlature has repealed a statewide referendum. Go Maine! Take that Lepage
Ranked choice voting is something progressives should embrace as a way to get our voice better heard, and add more competition to the ballots. "More choice more voice" is the theme as this allows the people to have more choice and importance in their vote, and possibly bring out larger numbers of voters which seems to be the lefts weak point in elections.
In fact if ranked choice voting was in effect our clearly unpopular governor Lepage would not have won 2 elections due to losing the popular vote, and the 2016 presidential election may well have played out differently also.
This is obviously a big concern for the Republicans with their hopes of gerrymandering and voter surpression, let's push to get ranked-choice voting on more ballots in more states and fix this broken electoral system of ours.
Learn more about ranked-choice voting here
Thank you and congratulations to everyone who worked hard to get this back on the ballot! Let's make sure we have a big turn out in June and make it happen this time!