BATH

As voters prepare to decide on Tuesday whether to repeal a law eliminating same-day registration, another new change in Maine’s voting law has some municipal clerks particularly frustrated this year.

Municipal clerks are required to conduct absentee balloting, prior to the election, at specific types of licensed assisted living facilities, nursing homes and residential care facilities, a list of which is maintained by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, according to Caitlin Chamberlain, spokeswoman for the Secretary of State.

But this year, for the first time, clerks may not conduct absentee voting at other facilities unless they receive a specific application from a voter requesting that the clerk visit and witness the person casting an absentee ballot.

Bath City Clerk Mary White said that change likely affected the number of people who cast ballots.

For years, White visited other elderly housing complexes in Bath — Winship Green and The Plant Home, for example — to facilitate absentee voting, and she said about 30 people in those residential facilities cast ballots each year.

With the new rules, White said, this year, she only visited Hillhouse — which is on the state list — and only three people there cast ballots.

White called other facilities, she said, “And I told them that all they have to do is call us and we could send them a ballot. I got word out to people as best as I could, but I do think it affected the number of people who voted.”

“ It’s not as simple as it used to be,” White said Friday. “ We can go, but … we have to have a paper saying they want us to go — we’re not allowed to go unless we’re requested. It isn’t easy. It isn’t like it used to be and it takes a lot of work. We don’t have the staff for that.”

Deputy Secretary of State Julie Flynn of the Bureau of Corporations and Elections acknowledged that the new law adds another step to the clerks’ process, but she said they can still drop off applications at facilities and then return with the ballots.

“I know it’s another step and I know it makes it difficult for the clerks, but there is a way to accommodate it,” Flynn said.

Topsham Town Clerk Ruth Lyons said that this year she took absentee ballot applications to The Highlands and Elm Street Assisted Living, the assisted living and nursing homes in town that are not on the state list. Residents filled them out, and then when Lyons returned to pick up the applications, residents voted.

Still, she acknowledged, “it makes a lot more work.”

But Lyons said she hasn’t heard much outcry from voters about the law change, and she didn’t express much objection to it herself. She does think absentee ballot voting is overused, however.

“I think people should be able to vote and I like having the numbers and stuff, but at the same time I would rather see early voting (at the town office) than absentee ballot voting,” Lyons said, because it’s more secure.

Thursday was the deadline to request absentee ballots, in keeping with another component of the new state election law. Previously, voters could request absentee ballots through Election Day. Now, Mainers who have yet to vote must do so Tuesday during regular polling hours.

Brunswick Town Clerk Fran Smith said she worries that voters at some of the town’s elderly housing won’t be able to get to the polls on Tuesday.

“ We’ve been going to Thornton Oaks and (Woodlawn Tower Senior Housing) for over 20 years now” to have voters complete absentee ballots, she said.

‘They can’t get out’

Just before noon on Thursday, a dozen residents of Woodlawn Towers gathered in the dining room to sip chowder for lunch.

Sitting in the dining room at Woodlawn Towers, Roger Bourgoin said that while he already cast his ballot, he suspects that fewer elderly people will vote now because “a lot can’t go out.”

“I think its kind of discrimination against old people,” Bourgoin said of the new law.

Fellow resident Sue Morgan agreed.

“They can’t get out,” she said of some residents at Woodlawn Towers and other elderly housing complexes. “I know (the secretary of state’s office) sends stuff in the mail, but a lot don’t necessarily understand it and they get mixed up. How are they going to get to the polls? A lot of older people won’t ask for help. They’re independent — that’s just the way they are.”

But Flynn said the law changes address concerns received from clerks in recent years that municipal staff took ballots out of the municipal office into people’s homes, and asked them if they wanted to vote, according to Flynn.

“ In one case in Oxford County — I don’t know what year it was — the state charged the clerk with influencing a voter,” Flynn said. “They had a complaint from an elderly voter’s family. The voter wasn’t on the voting list and hadn’t voted for many years — she was upward of 90 years old. The clerk just showed up and there was a hotly contested issue on the ballot — and the clerk said, ‘ Do you want to vote?’ The woman said she guessed she would, but when the voter went to mark the ballot, the clerk kept pointing at the other choice.”

Flynn said that case was “pleaded out,” but she said state officials have received other cases of ballots being handled “inappropriately.”

The new law also addresses “ fairness and evenhandedness,” Flynn said, by specifying exactly which level of licensed facilities clerks can visit without receiving an application for a ballot.

Flynn said municipal clerks were notified of all of the law changes by mail in August, as well as during an annual elections conference in Bangor and at a two-day training session for the clerks’ association in September.

Still, she has fielded complaints about the changes, and said, “ The first thing everyone has said is that (the clerks) can’t go to these facilities. I said, ‘That’s not true.’ They just need to receive an application. They may tell you they can’t go, but it’s just because they don’t want to do that extra step. Other clerks say, ‘I’m just going to do the two-step process.’”

“I don’t understand what the big deal was,” White said. “They put us in charge of the elections. Municipal clerks orchestrate the elections for the state. I felt like they don’t trust us.”

John Hodge, executive director of the Brunswick Housing Authority, which operates such complexes as Woodlawn Towers, said Thursday that he only recently heard of the law change, and it frustrates him.

“It will be a hardship for some of our residents who are very frail and who are not very mobile,” he said.

Hodge said he plans to speak to the local legislative delegation “to see if there’s any possibility of getting (the law) amended or changed.”

Flynn said the Legislature might still recommend changes to the brand-new law.

“ We certainly aren’t because our feeling is we kind of weighed the public policy against the security of the ballots,” she said. Most likely, she said, changes would be proposed after a year or so, “to see how it goes before you repeal or make changes to it.” bbrogan@timesrecord.com

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