If you’ve never lived in another state, or been involved in politics, you might not be aware that Maine’s method of selecting its constitutional officers – that is, the three positions defined in the state Constitution – is unique in this country.
Here, the Secretary of State, Attorney General, and State Treasurer (the State Auditor isn’t a constitutional position) are elected by the Legislature. In practice, this means that whichever party has the majority (especially in the larger House) chooses them, and they’re often chosen based on political considerations. In every single other state in the country, those positions – plus, sometimes, a whole slew of others, depending on the state – are elected directly by the voters. These aren’t inconsequential positions by any means, either: they’re all fairly important in their own way.
The Secretary of State oversees election administration, the state archives, and the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, amongst other duties. The Attorney General serves as the state’s chief prosecutor, represents the state in federal court and oversees the investigation of major criminal cases in almost the entire state. The State Treasurer is in charge of issuing bonds, recovering unclaimed property, advising stage agencies on finances and a number of other financial tasks.
If those duties sound boring, know that they’re not: whether or not you realize it, all of these constitutional officers play a big role in your life. Yet, you, the people of Maine, have no direct say in choosing them. We’re the only state in the country that leaves that task to the Legislature.
It was not always this way. Other states used to have their constitutional officers appointed as well, but they’ve since implemented reforms that converted them to elected positions. Maine, unfortunately, has not. The reason for this is a combination of institutional inertia, political power and the simple challenge of making the change.
Because these positions are defined in the Constitution, we’d have to pass a state constitutional amendment in order to change the way they’re chosen.
That would require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature, then it would have to go directly to the people to be passed on a majority vote. The last time that happened was with the right-to-food amendment, and that was mainly successful because it seemed to be a fairly harmless concept that largely flew under the radar.
A fundamental re-arrangement of the entire structure and nature of state government certainly would almost certianly not enjoy that privilege, regardless of whether the average voter cared about it or not. It would be subject to endless, vicious fighting in the Legislature over its passage, then there would be a great deal of money spent on any subsequent campaign to confirm its adoption – at least, unless some sort of bipartisan deal was struck to avoid all of that.
A bipartisan deal on this topic is exceedingly unlikely, however, and not least because the majority Democrats have abandoned even the pretense of bipartisanship as of late. No, it’s more because the current structure affords both parties significant political advantage. These constitutional positions give ambitious politicians an easy job to win that can readily launch them into the higher stratosphere of elective politics.
The problem with this system is that it leaves all of these officeholders unaccountable to anyone except their own political party. These positions aren’t even balanced like judicial nominations used to be at the federal level: the minority party has no say whatsoever. Sure, it can put up its own candidates for the jobs, but most of the time it doesn’t even bother. While the average voter should absolutely take these positions into account when choosing who to vote for in legislative races, because neither party ever makes much of an issue of it, that is unlikely in the extreme.
It would great if the two parties could get together and fix this antiquated system, aligning us with the rest of the nation as a whole. But that’s unlikely.
The majority party – whether it’s the Democrats now or the Republicans in the future – has little motivation to change the status quo. The minority party doesn’t either, really, since it hopes to some day become the majority – and even if it did, it wouldn’t have the numbers.
It would take some sort of grand bargain to get this done, and it’s tough to see how that could ever happen. So, sadly, it seems we’re stuck with the system as it is – no matter how archaic and undemocratic it may be.
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