Though Maine Republicans were considering voter ID legislation at the beginning of the year, Democrats vociferously objected because the bill could prevent thousands of Mainers from voting, particularly elderly individuals. On Friday, Republicans acceded to those objections, striking the voter ID language from an election law bill. This is the second time voter ID has failed to pass the GOP-controlled Maine legislature. Last year, a voter ID bill failed in the Senate after first being passed by the House.

In 2011, half a dozen states passed similar voter ID measures, from Texas to Wisconsin to South Carolina. As a result, millions of poor, rural or minority voters could be barred from voting in the 2012 election, a level of disenfranchisement not seen since the Jim Crow era.

Maine Republicans were chastened during the 2011 session after they passed a bill to eliminate the state’s 38 year-old law allowing for Election Day registration, only to see their move overturned by a citizens veto in November. More than 60 percent of Mainers rebuked the legislature and voted to restore Election Day registration.

State Rep. Diane Russell (D) pointed to this episode to explain why Republicans opted against pursuing voter ID again this year. “Last November, 60% of Maine voters overwhelmingly rejected the Republican election suppression agenda,” Russell, who sits on the committee that removed the voter ID language, told ThinkProgress. “It is a real testament to Maine voters that Republicans decided against pursuing another failed election suppression policy by killing voter ID.”

Former state Sen. David Trahan (R), who served until December 2011, agreed with this take. “I do think that the referendum question–Question 1–changed that dynamic,” Trahan told the Maine Public Broadcasting Network. “And I think you’re going to see some gun-shy folks revisiting something to do with voting.”

Friday’s move likely puts voter ID to rest in Maine for 2012.

Pingree’s husband, hedge fund manager S. Donald Sussman, has been a significant contributor to Equality Maine. Activists there announced last week that they had collected sufficient signatures to place marriage equality on the ballot this fall.

Courage offers hope and encouragement to men and women who desire to live in accordance with the church’s teaching on homosexuality — specifically that the dignity and identity of every person is not determined by their sexual attractions, but by their relationship with the Lord and their striving to live the virtues of faith, hope and charity.

It’s fairly obvious that Bernard is implying that non-heterosexual identities are not worthy of dignity. Given one of the goals of Courage speaks to “the problems of homosexuality,” the ministry’s motives are clearly to impose guilt and shame as it discourages gay people from ever experiencing love. Combined with the large sums of money the Church commits to fighting marriage equality and defending “religious liberty,” condemning the gay community seems to have become one of its highest priorities.

Some of the signatures collected

The group also released a new poll, which found that “a majority (54 percent) favor allowing same-sex couples to legally marry in Maine” and echoes the growing support for equality nationwide:

“Marriage is going to be decided at the ballot box,” Betsy Smith, Executive Director of Equality Maine, said on a call with bloggers. “We feel very comfortable about winning, it’s the reason we made a decision to go.” Smith said the campaign has invested in a “paid persuasion canvas program,” knocked on 110,000 doors and engaged in 40,000 conversations with Mainers and persuaded 22 percent of opponents to be more supportive of marriage. Advocates also stressed that same-sex marriage has already been approved by the legislative process and signed into law by the governor, describing the campaign as an effort to bring that law back. The wording of the initiative has not yet been finalized, but the measure will be titled, ‘An Act to Allow Marriage Licenses For Same-Sex Couples and Protect Religious Freedoms.’

Smith added that there is a small chance that opponents will try to dilute the marriage equality question by proposing a competing measure to legalize civil unions or domestic partnerships. “It is highly unlikely that will happen,” she said, explaining that “it is a complicated process and high hurdle to jump…it would also be very difficult for them to find support for a competing measure…[and] it’s very difficult for them to find a majority of support to pass civil unions.”

In 2009, the referendum to overturn marriage equality passed by a vote of 53 percent to 47 percent.

Tens of thousands of Mainers responded by petitioning for the matter come to a referendum. Issue 1 was one of the most-anticipated votes on election day this year, with pundits watching closely to see how citizens would react to the Republican-led war on voting, which ramped up in states across the country this year.

Recognizing the referendum’s importance, voting rights opponents poured money into the campaign to repeal election day registration. In fact, just two days after the state’s campaign finance reporting deadline, a secret conservative donor funneled $250,000 into the race, allowing the No On 1 campaign to make significant TV ad buys in an inexpensive media market.

Per state law, however, the identity of donors must be revealed within 45 days after the election. In fact, the entire $250,000 worth of late money came from a single source: the American Justice Partnership.

The AJP is a conservative legal organization based not in Maine, but in Michigan. On their website, the group states they are fighting against “the scheming George Soros money machine” which is “trying to sabotage your right to vote,” a claim apparently made without a hint of irony. Though the AJP doesn’t disclose where its funding comes from, the Bangor Daily News notes that it has partnered with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the past, a group that has been instrumental in the proliferation of voter ID laws across the country.

The AJP’s secret $250,000 contribution ultimately accounted for over 78 percent of all the money raised by the No On 1 campaign. In other words, over three-quarters of the funding for opponents of election day registration in Maine came from Michigan. (This money was then used to run ads decrying “outsiders from other states” who were influencing the Maine election.) With Mainers of all stripes explaining to ThinkProgress why they cherish having the option to register at the polls on election day, it’s not altogether surprising that the predominance of financial support for No On 1 came from out of state.

Though AJP’s website correctly warns that “Your right to vote is at stake”, it’s groups like AJB and ALEC that are threatening that right in the first place. Maine voters stood up to the influence of voting rights opponents in November, however, passing Issue 1 by an overwhelming 61-39 margin and restoring election day registration in the Pine Tree State.

In 1996, Maine voters passed the Clean Elections Act, making it the first state in the country to have public financing for state elections. Since that time, state legislative and gubernatorial candidates have used public financing, as the Maine Public Broadcasting Network writes , to “discourage the use of special interest money out of state and, allow candidates to spend more time running for office instead of fundraising.” The system has been so successful that in 2010, “more than 80 percent of legislators used Clean Election money,” according to the Bangor Daily News.

Here’s how it works. Once candidates collect a certain number of $5 qualifying checks, they receive a set amount of funds – just under $5,500 for contested state representative races – to run their campaign. If their opponent or an outside group spends additional money, the “clean elections candidate” receives matching funds as well.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar matching funds provision in Arizona. As a result, Maine legislators agreed to revisit their state’s law and bring it into compliance.

However, Republicans are using the opportunity to try to undermine the state’s entire public financing system. Though a number of ideas have been proposed by the Maine Ethics Commission to bring the state’s program into compliance, Republicans rejected those proposals in a party-line vote yesterday. Instead, GOP lawmakers simply eliminated the matching funds provision without offering any alternatives to fill the void:

In a strict party line vote on Tuesday, Republican members of the Legislature’s Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee narrowly favored stripping the matching funds provision from the Maine Clean Election Act.

Maine lawmakers have been struggling since that court ruling with a way to address the elimination of matching funds and have debated two options put forth by the Maine Ethics Commission.

Under the first option, the state would pay candidates fixed amounts upfront — $7,716 for House candidates and $33,617 for Senate candidates, significantly more than the current allocations. Under the second, clean candidates could get extra payments by collecting additional $5 checks from private donors. In order to qualify for public funding in the first place, candidates need to collect a minimum number of such donations.

Republicans have rejected both.

State Rep. Diane Russell (D), one of the clean election law’s leading proponents, told ThinkProgress that the effort to roll back Maine’s public financing system could have national ramifications. “Maine is the model state,” said Russell. “If they kill public financing here, they put the stake in the heart nationally.”

The full legislature will take up the issue in January.

Ignoring those failures, Maine Republicans –including Gov. Paul LePage — have pledged to continue their fight to restrict voting rights and will revisit their voter ID bill when a new legislative session begins in January, the AP reports:

But after a voter ID bill that passed the House failed in the Senate this year, lawmakers decided to carry it over to the session that starts in January. And Republican Gov. Paul LePage believes the issue needs to be revisited, notwithstanding Tuesday’s vote, said spokeswoman Adrienne Bennett. [...]

The voter ID bill had more than 80 co-sponsors — all Republicans — when Rep. Richard Cebra introduced it.

The Naples Republican sees his proposal as a reasonable, constitutionally sound means to protect Maine elections from fraud. He also dismisses assertions that such laws deprive citizens of their right to vote.

Republican attempts to “protect…elections from fraud” continue to ring hollow, however, as such fraud is incredibly rare. But in Maine, where city and town clerks monitor elections, fraud is even more uncommon. According to the ACLU, the state has had only two cases of voter fraud at the polls in the past four decades, and a recent study on Maine’s student voting fraud — one of the main problems cited by state Republicans — found that the “problem” didn’t actually exist.

“I don’t think, in the entire time I’ve been working the polls, I don’t think anyone has ever come in and claimed to be someone they weren’t,” Harlan Baker, an election clerk in Portland, told ThinkProgress’ Scott Keyes last week. “I’ve never witnessed it.”

Maine’s Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster is defending the tone of the ad, arguing that it was designed to “educate” the public about EqualityMaine, “one of the advocacy groups involved in the coalition that wants to retain the state’s 38-year-old EDR law.” “We’ve talked about the different left-of-center groups that are supporting this referendum and questioned why they’re doing that,” Webster said. “That’s all this is.”

Meanwhile, a recent poll from Public Policy Polling (PPP) found that support for EqualityMaine’s “agenda” — which includes marriage equality — is increasing among independents in Maine. Fifty-one percent of voters say they support marriage equality, including 53 percent of independents. In 2009, EqualityMaine lost its campaign to preserve marriage equality when a referendum to overturn same-sex marriage passed by a vote of 53 percent to 47 percent.

Tomorrow, the war on voting rights will descend on Maine as voters determine the fate of their state’s 38 year-old election day voter registration law.

The highly-anticipated vote could set the tone for 2012 as Republicans continue to push legislation that would hinder people’s ability to vote, including photo ID laws, shortened early voting periods, and even new restrictions on registering.

ThinkProgress traveled around Maine last week to get voters’ thoughts about the upcoming referendum. Across the state, voters were outraged that their voting rights were being stripped away by the legislature, potentially resulting in the disenfranchisement of thousands of Mainers. With just two cases of voter fraud in the past 38 years, many were livid that “electoral integrity” was being used as a red herring rationale for rolling back their right to register at the polls.

Watch a short video of Mainers expressing in their own words what election day registration has meant to them and why they want to preserve the law:

Question 1 remains a tight race. As ThinkProgress reported last week, a secret conservative donor has funneled over $250,000 into the state in an effort to get rid of election day registration. In an inexpensive media market like Maine, that money could go a long way to tip the scales in an off-year election.

Still, if Mainers are able to beat back the influence of large, undisclosed donations and pass Question 1, they will have struck a major blow to the GOP effort to restrict voting rights.

“It’s time for the wealthy to pay their fair share before the middle class becomes the forgotten class. And it’s time for the banks to give back what they were given. There are those in politics, particularly those on the conservative side, who can’t get enough of telling people that the wealthy one per cent must not be taxed because doing so kills jobs. The real job-killers are corporate greed and political expediency. It’s time for working people in Maine and all across the country to take back the American dream.”

Maine is a great example of the reality that public opinion is moving on the topic of gay marriage. 2 years ago voters in the state narrowly voted to overturn a law allowing same sex couples to marry. But now 51% of voters in the state say they think gay marriage should be legal to only 42% who continue to believe it should be illegal. Opinions among Democrats and Republicans haven’t changed a whole lot over the last 2 years, but independents have gone from opposing gay marriage by a 52/46 margin to supporting it by a 53/39 spread.

We also tested proposed language for a ballot measure next year that would allow gay marriage while also making it clear that no religious institution would be required to perform those marriages if it didn’t want to. Right now voters say they would pass that by a 48/35 margin.

Look:

In 2009, the referendum to overturn marriage equality passed by a vote of 53 percent to 47 percent.

How much medical care will yard work buy?

Deb Barth is raking leaves for Lesley Jones. But Barth isn’t earning money for her yardwork, at least not in physical currency. She’s earning “time dollars” — for every two hours she spends doing odd jobs, she’ll earn a free visit with her doctor.

As a struggling artist, Barth’s income qualifies her for the program at True North, a nonprofit health care clinic in Falmouth, Maine. She’s one of 33 patients who pay with time dollars there.

“I do things like deep cleaning, organizing,” Barth says. “I also offer caregiver support for people who may be caring for an older parent.”

So how does her doctor cash in these time credits? By getting free services from any of the other hundreds of people who belong to The Portland Hour Exchange Program.

Tom Dahlborg, the executive director of True North who used to work in Medicaid, says the program has many benefits. He noticed when people were receiving free care through Medicaid they would often feel guilty and undeserving of good treatment, so they would settle for less than what they needed. But patients who pay through time dollars work hard for their care, and as a result, are more fully engaged.

Another enormous benefit is the program cuts through the red tape that Medicaid beneficiaries increasingly have to contend with as Republican legislators enact more requirements, tests, and eligibility restrictions. Therapist Jennifer Lunden works with True North as well as the state’s Medicaid program and says, “For me, the biggest burden of taking especially MaineCare is the amount of paperwork and the amount of hoops that need to be jumped through.”

The program is commendable for accepting the types of payments that poor participants can offer, and organizing it into an efficient system. But it also has limitations, which highlight the need for a more inclusive health care system that doesn’t leave millions out in the cold to fend for themselves.

Dahlborg says that while there are no shortage of eager patients, finding doctors who are willing to go outside the system and barter for health care has been a challenge. And if patients without insurance need specialized or emergency care that True North can’t offer, they have to go elsewhere and pay out of pocket. They also have to leave the program if their income goes up too much.

The Maine secretary of state’s office began the investigation in July after Maine Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster gave him a list of 206 out-of-state students attending public Maine universities he suggested were voting there illegally. Secretary of State Charlie Summers then broadened the investigation to go back several years and look into noncitizens as well:

After a two-month investigation into possible voter fraud by college students and noncitizens, Maine Secretary of State Charlie Summers said Wednesday his evidence showed that none of the students committed fraud and only one noncitizen voted in Maine.

Nevertheless, Summers said his investigation confirmed his belief that Maine’s election system is “fragile and vulnerable,” and he vowed to submit legislation in January to fix some of the problems.

“I feel very strongly based on what I’ve laid out here today that we have a situation in the state of Maine that if we don’t try to modernize our election practices and procedures eventually it will lead us down the road where something breaks down,” Summers said.

Although no students were found guilty of legal violations, Summers says they are still under scrutiny and sent letters to dozens of them warning them that if they intend to remain residents of Maine, they will need to register their car in the state.

State GOP Chair Webster shed light on his true motivations in June when he said that it was important for the state to make it more difficult to vote because “Democrats intentionally steal elections.” He also said recently that students should have to pay taxes if they want to vote.

Earlier this year, the health care advocacy group known as Consumers for Affordable Health Care approached members of Gov. Paul LePage’s staff about being included on a nine-member advisory panel that will make recommendations to the Legislature for the establishment of Maine’s Health Insurance Exchange.

“They were very cordial, and I want to be very clear–they were very up-front and they let us know in advance before the appointments were made public that there was not a slot available for us to fill,” says Mitchell Stein of Consumers for Affordable Health Care. “They listened, but, unfortunately, their answer was no.”

Stein says his agency had hoped there would be at least one consumer member on the committee to represent the health care concerns of average Mainers as the state prepares to meet a 2014 deadline for getting the exchanges up and running….The committee is chaired by former House Republican Leader Joe Bruno, who operates a chain of Maine pharmacies, and consists almost exclusively of health insurance and business lobbyists and executives in the health care industry.

LePage’s tilt towards industry is not surprising. Since taking office, LePage has repeatedly attempted to cut the state’s Medicaid program by reducing eligibility to the level in place in most states, thereby throwing off some 30,000 Mainers off the rolls. Under his new “market based” health law, those beneficiaries would have to go out and purchase coverage from private insurers.

LePage predicted that the newly uninsured population will be able to find coverage though a new state insurance law that allows consumers to buy health insurance across state lines and through employer-based captives, insurance companies that are allowed to finance and leverage risk without having to buy additional insurance to cover that risk. The measure is part of LePage’s market-based approach to health care, but even Republicans are skeptical that it will be able to offer affordable coverage to lower income residents. Sen. Richard Rosen (R), co-chairman of the Appropriations Committee that has rejected similar proposals from LePage, told the Bangor Daily News that while “he agreed with the concept the governor is pushing of having individuals and families pay for part of the their health care costs,” forcing Medicaid beneficiaries to go out and purchase insurance “may be premature.” Democrats argued that the proposal is not feasible:

LePage said the new state health insurance law has provisions to make health insurance more affordable, and he believes many of those who are between the current 200 percent of poverty level and 133 percent can help pay for their own insurance coverage.

Rep. Peggy Rotundo, D-Lewiston, the lead Democrat on the [Appropriations] committee, disagrees.

She said the 133 percent level is $14,484 for a single adult. For a family of four, it is $29,726. She said families and individuals at those income levels simply can’t afford health insurance at current rates.

“The more health care we take away from people, the more those costs are shifted to people who have health insurance and more shifts to local communities and local hospitals,” she said. Rotundo said covering those families and individuals with Medicaid is cost-effective for the state with the federal government paying about two-thirds of the bill.

That last point isn’t even up for debate. LePage would transfer beneficiaries from a fairly efficient government program to the highly inefficient private market, where policies are incredibly expensive (particularly before the Affordable Care Act reforms are implemented). One recent study found that “after controlling for health status, age, gender, income, and other factors, the average per person annual cost of serving an adult on Medicaid was 20 percent less than under private insurance and the annual cost of serving a child on Medicaid or CHIP was 27 percent less than under private insurance.” LePage’s new law — which would allow insurers to cherry pick the healthiest beneficiaries — will likely go even further in dividing the health insurance market and increasing costs for those former Medicaid patients who need the most coverage. Meanwhile, limiting eligibility would “save the state less than $7 million a year–costs they claim will simply be shifted to local governments, hospitals and those with health insurance.”