Call it the new “open carry.” Mysterious men and women hanging out at polling places with video cameras.
They scattered among Maine polling places like so many Second Amendment sentinels on Tuesday, some with their constitutional game faces on, others looking ever so smug as they readied, aimed and shot their endless video clips of every citizen who dared sign a petition calling for a referendum on universal gun-sale background checks in Maine.
They asked for names.
They asked for addresses.
When asked why they were asking, those willing to speak at all said it was to protect the integrity of the voting process.
I’m almost afraid to ask this – what with all the pointing and shooting going on – but can these people get any weirder?
This much we know, thanks to the sleuthing of reporters who thought when they headed out Tuesday morning that the only thing remotely suspenseful about this off-year election was whether Portland Mayor-elect Ethan Strimling’s can’t-lose smile would push him over the 50 percent mark and thus eliminate the need for an instant runoff against incumbent Michael Brennan. (The smile won.)
But then along came Project Dirigo Petition Integrity Program, a ragtag group of video-toting observers who grabbed chairs at some (but by no means all) polls and aimed their lenses squarely at Maine Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense, the state chapter of a group formed after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Its goal is to collect the necessary 61,000 signatures to force a statewide vote next year requiring background checks on all gun sales throughout Maine except for those between family members.
Project Dirigo hasn’t registered as a political action committee or otherwise made its underlying philosophy publicly known. But I’ll bet you my company-owned, video-equipped iPhone (sorry, boss) that they see this petition drive as the first step in a conspiracy to take their guns away and give them en masse as a farewell gift to President Obama when he leaves office a year from this January.
But back to the videos.
Shane Belanger, a volunteer with Project Dirigo and founder of the Maine Open Carry Association, told the Portland Press Herald while taping at Woodfords Congregational Church in Portland on Tuesday that lawyers would look at his hours of footage when the election was over. Beyond that, he seemed strikingly unsure what they’d do with it.
“This is all about making sure the petition process is fair and transparent,” Belanger said.
Uh-huh. Kind of like the National Football League’s instant replay – except in this case there’s nothing to replay because all people are doing is signing their names to a piece of damn paper!
Which brings us to the real reason – actually, I can think of two – that the video brigade was out there Tuesday.
The first, and most obvious, is pure intimidation.
More than a few voters told reporters Tuesday that the video cameras, not to mention the name-and-address questions, hovering over the petition tables were enough to make them think twice about bothering to sign the background-check petition at all.
That’s not protecting the democratic process. That’s vandalizing it.
And while it may be legal for now – state Sen. Bill Diamond, D-Windham, is considering legislation that might soon render it otherwise – these self-appointed protectors of the republic spent the day at the polls with one, and only one, interest in mind: protecting their precious guns from Obama.
The second motive behind the videos, which we can only hope fell flat, was the possibility of bagging a gotcha moment.
I must say I laughed out loud Tuesday morning when I logged onto the Press Herald website and there was Willy Ritch, communications director for U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, not-so-discreetly signing the background-check petition while Belanger’s video captured the sheer democracy of it all.
Ritch later admitted to feeling “a little uncomfortable” being recorded. “I wondered what they were going to do with the video,” he said.
Not an unreasonable concern when you’re the mouthpiece for a liberal congresswoman from Maine. But Ritch, well versed in such matters, kept his cool throughout.
Still, what if someone else decided the video camera or the insinuation behind the questioning was too much of an insult to the sanctity of Election Day? What if that voter let Belanger or one of his comrades have it about their crazy infatuation for guns, their myopic interpretation of the Second Amendment, their blindness to the mass shootings that play out with mind-numbing regularity in our schools, our movie theaters, our malls, our workplaces …?
Might that citizen’s anti-gun tirade, captured up close and personal on a Project Dirigo video, not provide perfect fodder for the next “save our guns” TV ad campaign?
I thought long and hard about the freak-out factor as I made my way to the Buxton polls late Tuesday afternoon.
I decided that if a Project Dirigo videographer got in my face, I’d tell him, “My name? Elmer Fudd. Big gun guy. Always shooting myself in the foot.”
But alas, no Project Dirigo. No camera in my face. Just a very vigilant young man with a background-check petition who’d received updates all day via his cellphone about the video invasions underway elsewhere around the state.
“It’s crazy,” he said, his forehead furrowed with worry.
I should have got him on tape.
Bill Nemitz can be contacted at:
bnemitz@pressherald.com
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