Last Tuesday, three out of five Mainers voted against the state Legislature’s move to restrict access to the ballot. In response, the Legislature plans to push yet another restrictive voting measure in 2012: voter ID.
Last week’s vote reinstates Maine’s 38-year-old same-day registration policy that was revoked by state Republicans earlier this year. The policy had previously inspired other states to adopt same-day registration, raising voter participation in many of those states.
Tuesday’s overwhelming vote in favor of the vanguard law “indicates that voters resent barriers to our constitutional voting right” said Shenna Bellows, executive director of the ACLU of Maine.
“Legislators should move very cautiously in erecting any new barriers given this overwhelming vote,” she said.
While state Republicans claim that a voter ID measure would discourage or prevent fraud, the real question to ask is whether they would discourage or prevent legitimate votes.
“In Maine, Bellows said she finds [Republican Rep. Richard] Cebra’s voter ID bill worrisome in many respects,” the Associated Press reports. “For example, someone with a perfectly valid ID who has moved shortly before an election might be denied a vote because an address on the most common picture ID, the driver’s license, doesn’t match the one on the voter clerk’s list.”