Maine’s top law enforcement and election officials say Gov. Paul LePage attempted to discourage college students from voting when he threatened to investigate whether they followed all voter and residency laws after the election.
Meanwhile, the ACLU of Maine says it’s filing a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice alleging that the governor violated the federal Voting Rights Act.
The governor’s threat to ensure college students register their vehicles and obtain Maine driver’s licenses seemed to validate anonymously drafted fliers that were distributed at Bates College over the weekend.
The fliers, dubbed a “legal advisory,” purported to outline requirements to establish residency and vote in Maine, but they were quickly deemed misleading by Secretary of State Matt Dunlap, a Democrat. He says the messages conflated two separate issues, requirements to vote and establishing residency.
Dunlap says the fliers were ultimately an attempt to intimidate college students from voting in Tuesday’s election.
“And anyone who does this and thinks it’s cute, to win an election, really, I think it’s a treasonable offense. That’s how I feel about it. I feel very strongly about this,” he says.
While the state does require anyone planning to live in Maine for more than a month to get a Maine driver’s license and register their car here, neither requirement is tied to the eligibility to vote.
According to Dunlap and Attorney General Janet Mills, voting laws do not treat out-of-state college students any differently than other citizens: If they can prove they’re living here, they can vote here.
“The law doesn’t care why you’re here in Maine,” Mills says.
She says all anyone needs to do to register to vote is provide something that shows where they live. It could be a driver’s license or a utility bill. And if a student, or anyone, doesn’t have either of those, they can sign an affidavit at the polls swearing to their residence.
“The residency requirements for voting are extremely loose because it is a constitutional entitlement,” Mills says.
The partisan dispute over out-of-state college students voting in Maine has a history. In 2012, Maine Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster accused more than 200 students of voting in Maine and in their home states. An investigation later proved that never happened.
At the time, Democrats said the effort was designed to intimidate college students. The same outcry erupted over the weekend and on Monday, when the governor issued a warning to students against committing voter fraud.
Bates president Clayton Spencer says LePage’s remarks echoed the intent of the anonymous fliers.
“I was disappointed to see that he seemed to be arraying himself on the side of whoever is trying to suppress student voting,” he says.
Some students at Bates say the fliers had the intended effect. Praneet Kang, a senior from New Jersey, says some students are now worried they’re breaking the law.
“I think it might have scared some people off in thinking that what they’re doing is illegal and that there might be repercussions for voting, and it definitely made people nervous,” she says.
The governor’s statement prompted the ACLU of Maine to ask the Department of Justice to investigate LePage for voter intimidation.
“The federal Voting Rights Act prohibits threats, intimidation and coercion designed to make it less likely that people are going to vote. Today’s action by Gov. LePage, we believe, violates the Voting Rights Act,” says Zach Heiden, an attorney for the ACLU.
The governor didn’t back down from his statement. He pointed to statutes posted on the secretary of state’s website showing that people who claim residency here must also register their vehicles and obtain a Maine driver’s license.
Neither Dunlap nor Mills dispute the residency requirements, but they say the governor is deliberately mixing two issues. Mills says state election officials do not check to see whether voters register their cars, or vice versa.
“It’s a political statement he’s made, purely political statement by a politician intending to skew an election, intending to discourage people from exercising their right to vote,” she says.
Bates student Emily Manter says the rules governing voting rights and residency were creating confusion for students.
“All of that language is really convoluted throughout that whole page. Different sides can take, like pick and choose. I think the law needs to be clarified,” she says.
Dunlap held a news conference Monday to say the governor’s statement and the Bates fliers were not isolated incidents. He says students at the University of Maine had received emails with similar information, including a threat that students could lose their financial aid. He described the effort to suppress the student vote as shameful.
The controversy erupted of an the eve of an election in which the stakes are high in the 2nd Congressional District, where both Bates and the University of Maine are located. The district could play an outsize role in the presidential election, especially for Republican hopeful Donald Trump.
