In an appearance on a conservative radio show on Tuesday, state Rep. Patrick Corey (R-Windham) said that the fact that any people’s veto petitions submitted this year would be placed on the ballot during the March Democratic presidential primary would likely doom the prospects and sap the enthusiasm of the groups petitioning to overturn a slate of newly-passed progressive laws.
“The idea that these people put together these efforts that you know are extremely costly, that are volunteer-intensive, my understanding is these ones are very volunteer-intensive, and then you tell them that ‘hey, by the way this thing is going to go on a ballot when you guys probably have a snowball’s chance in hell of passing,’ why would they be out there collecting signatures?” said Corey on the WVOM morning show.
Backers of a set of people’s vetoes, the most serious of which are attempts to repeal laws requiring insurance coverage for abortion, allowing ‘death with dignity’ for terminally-ill Mainers and strengthening immunization requirements for schools, initially believed that the measures would be voted on during a June primary. A staff member at the Secretary of State’s office gave the wrong election date to petitioners early in the process but the office later corrected themselves based on Maine’s newly-passed presidential primary law.
Corey hopes to shift the referendums to June by introducing legislation to remove the word “election” from the statute governing Maine’s presidential primaries. That seems like a longshot logistically, politically and constitutionally. The legislature is in Democratic hands and isn’t even in session right now, with only “emergency” legislation being considered next year. The timing of people’s vetoes and the definition of a statewide election are also stated explicitly in Maine’s Constitution. A statewide primary would likely continue to qualify as such regardless of any tweaks to the statutory language used to describe it.
The sponsors of at least one of the people’s vetoes, the anti-vaccine campaign, say they’re considering a legal challenge to the Secretary of State’s interpretation of the law, but their allies at the Christian Civic League, which is leading the campaigns for the two other major people’s vetoes, say that isn’t likely to succeed.
“The legal information I’ve gotten is they’re making a correct interpretation and the issue for us, again, is just that we were given the wrong information,” said Mike McClellan, the League’s policy director, speaking on the same radio show about the Secretary of State’s guidance.
The entire timing issue could have been avoided if veto backers had gathered signatures quickly enough to place their measures on the ballot during this November’s statewide election. Previous campaigns, including a 2009 effort to repeal Maine’s same-sex marriage law (also backed by the Christian Civic League) and a 2011 veto to protect same-day voter registration, met that earlier deadline. A November vote was apparently the initial goal of at least some of this year’s campaigns as well.
“We were initially targeting November of this year, of 2019, and then I just recently heard we would have had to have been done last week, I think on August 8. So as we learned it was just not realistic to get that many signatures that quick,” said McClellan.
(Rep. Patrick Corey official photo)
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