Dear Editor:

Question 1, the voter referendum item up for a vote in November that would require Maine citizens to present photo IDs when they vote, whether in person or absentee, and add numerous other requirements and restrictions for absentee voters, prompts the question: what are the problems the initiative is meant to remedy? 

The right-wing Heritage Foundation went looking for instances of voter fraud in Maine and found two documented individual cases, both in 2010, among millions of votes cast by whatever meansin various elections since 1982. 

The provisions in Question 1 dealing specifically with absentee voting are said to be necessary to bring security and transparency to the process.  Forty-five percent of Maine voters voted absentee in recent elections, and there have been no reported cases of fraud. 

This raises the suspicion that security and transparency are not the objectives of the backers of Question 1, but rather to make absentee voting burdensome for all concerned and discourage its use.  And there’s one provision that suggests a bit of paranoia: During the absentee voting period, only a “bipartisan team of election officials,” not the town clerk or staff, “may possess the key to the secured drop box.”  (Let it be noted that the provision does not specify how joint physical custody of that key by the partisan members of the team is to be managed in practice.  This lapse sure looks like a disqualifying drop box security issue to me.) 

So in the minds of Question 1 backers, not only are voters not to be trusted to follow voting rules, the clerks and staff themselves can’t be trusted even to do the basic housekeeping chore of collecting the contents of drop boxes.  What an insult to the hundreds of town clerks across Maine who work so diligently to maintain the integrity of our elections. 

Thomas Eichler 

Wiscasset