AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine voters could be asked to decide a half dozen or more questions on the statewide ballot next November if all the groups circulating petitions are successful.
The Maine Republican Party hopes to collect enough signatures to put its welfare and tax reform proposals before the Legislature — which returns in January — and ultimately before Maine voters next November.
Party Chairman Rick Bennett said the campaign has gathered about 10,000 signatures to date, meaning it will need to average nearly that amount every week to meet the minimum threshold on time.
“Big task, a daunting task, but we are working away at it,” Bennett said.
University of Maine at Farmington political science professor Jim Melcher said even with the party structure fired up in support of the petition drive, collecting signatures over the holidays at the pace that is needed will be difficult.
“You know, they’ve got more behind them than a lot of petition drives typically do … but I think they are going to have to do something they are not doing now,” said Melcher.
Bennett said the campaign is doing things differently. He said a recent email appeal for volunteers from Gov. Paul LePage has yielded 35 more petition circulators and he says the GOP is turning to county and municipal committees to circulate petitions — not only at party functions but also at local community events. And Bennett said the party’s voter databases are being used to identify likely petition signers.
“We also have a lot of good information in our database about voters that care about these issues and so we can focus on those voters and actually go visit them in their homes,” Bennett said.
Bennett is optimistic the organizational effort will pay off with enough signatures by the Feb. 1 filing deadline.
Meanwhile, the only campaign to have its petitions validated so far is the ranked-choice voting group, but others are close. Mainers for Fair Wages, which is seeking to put a minimum wage increase on the ballot, collected 30,000 on Election Day and is preparing to submit petitions with 90,000 signatures to the secretary of state.
David Boyer with the effort to legalize, regulate and tax the cultivation and distribution of marijuana says the group brought in 20,000 signatures on Election Day and has enough now to qualify. But, Boyer says, more signatures will be gathered to provide a buffer against disqualified signatures.
“Because 20 percent of the signatures are bad, you need 20 percent or 25 percent more to make sure you have valid signatures,” Boyer said.
Boyer says the group is aiming for 20,000 signatures over the next seven weeks through the holidays.
Other petition drives are underway to force consideration of background checks in private gun sales and to increase the amount of state funding for local schools by increasing the taxes on those making more than $200,000 a year. In both cases, if the groups are not successful this February, they could submit petitions in 2017 to the Legislature for consideration.
Citizen initiatives that are not enacted by the Legislature go to the voters for a statewide referendum.
This article appears through a media partnership with Maine Public Broadcasting Network.