For several weeks last summer, House Majority Whip Seth Berry heard rumors about how proponents of a people's veto to repeal the Legislature's tax reform bill were spreading lies in order to get voters to sign their signature petitions. When he learned the circulators were at the Windsor Fair, he decided to drive up and see for himself.
And he says he became convinced that Maine's laws needed to be changed in three specific ways. "You should be able to know who's paying and being paid for your signature, you should be able to retract your signature if you're lied to, and you should also be able to ask the secretary of state which names are actually valid," Berry says.
One bill now under consideration by the Legislature's Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee calls for a consitutional amendment to provide financial information about the costs of any proposal and how it would be financed. Another imposes new restrictions and penalties on those who get paid to gather signatures.
Berry, a Bowdoinham Democrat, says his bill is needed to offset what he sees as inequities in the current process. "This is all about ensuring that our ballot has integrity, and that Maine citizens, and only Maine citizens, get to decide what their laws are," he says. "If an out-of-state corporation comes in and wants to influence our laws here in Maine, if they want to purchase our signatures, Mainers have a right to know who is paying and who is being paid, we have a right to go to the secretary of state and say, 'Show me the list.' And finally, we have a right to decide when to give our signature and when to take it away."
"The first thing I noticed was the gentleman that had been dead since 2004," testified Greene Deputy Town Clerk Sally Anne Hebert. "And I said to the other girl in the office, I says, 'Look at this,' I says, 'Isn't he dead?'"
Hebert shares Berry's concern that fraud can arise in the current system of gathering signatures for a citizens initiative or people's veto. Having a dead voter show up on a petition may have been the most egregious example of signature fraud, but Herbert says it wasn't the only instance she saw last year.
"A couple of them was people that I knew, and one of them was my neighbor, and I says, 'This is not their writing,'" Hebert told committee members. "And so we pull out the voter registration cards anyways, and I was checking it and I'm going, 'Boy, this is really...' So I call the Secretary of State's Office and then they called me back and told me to contact some of the people. And I had them come in and check the signature on the petition, and they says, 'We never signed that.'"
Joel Foster of the Washington D.C.-based Ballot Initiatives Strategy Center says Maine scored a "D" in a national analysis in how well its citizen initiative process protects voters. He says the state's standing would be improved by adopting the disclosure provisions in Berry's bill. "We found out that there's a very close link between paying signature gatherers per signature and fraud," Foster says.
"This belongs to the people -- it's not the Legislature's to tinker with," said Mary Adams, a long-time tax activist from Garland. Adams is among those who oppose changes to the citizens initiative process. She and other critics say they're an attempt by majority Democrats in the Legislature to protect their turf and not have voters undo their laws.
State Sen. David Trahan, a Waldoboro Republican, accused Rep. Seth Berry of personally placing himself between one of the tax reform repeal signature gatherers and a voter. He was gently admonished by House committee chair Pamela Trinward, a Waterville Democrat.
"The offensiveness is only aggravated for thos who participate in the signature gathering and were harrassed by the sponsor. I do not use the word harrassment lightly," Trahan said.
"Excuse me," Trinward interrupted. "I'd like to remind you that it's inappropriate to speak about any other member of the body's intention, and I'd appreciate it if you remember that."
"Absolutely," Trahan replied.
State Sen. Debra Plowman, a Hampden Republican, said Democrats who seek to restrict the rights of voters to seek citizen initatives do so at their peril.
"Frankly, I think that this is just kind of a sour grapes kind of thing, and I'll tell you what, this is not the time for people to be told that they have no access to their government, or that you're going to limit their access to petitioning their government."
Members of the committee plan to work all three bills and possibly turn out a single piece of legislation -- if they conclude one is needed.