Signature gatherers were out in force at nearly 100 locations throughout Maine today to drum up support for a citizens' initiative that aims to limit the influence of money in politics. An organization called "We The People Maine" - part of a national coalition called "Move To Amend" - is hoping to collect 80,000 signatures over the next six months.
"Would you like to sign a petition for a constitutional amendment that says corporations are not people?" asks Naomi Cohen, the group's coordinator, who began the day gathering signatures at a polling station in Portland.
She says the goal is a constitutional amendment that would ask Maine voters next year to support a proposal to roll back a couple of controversial Supreme Court decisions giving corporations more political clout.
"We're hoping to overrule Citizens United and the McCutcheon decision," Cohen says. "As you probably know, Citizens United allows unlimited amounts of money to flood into politics," while the McCutcheon decision, she says, allows individual political donations of up to $3.6 million, if you know how to play the system.
"Which means that our government is not listening to us," Cohen says. "They're listening to all of the big corporations and the ultra-wealthy people."
"It's important because corporations have much more money than us - they can influence elections a lot more easily than ordinary people," says Peggy York.
York was among the local residents who stopped by to sign the petition. So were Carol Wanbaugh and her partner John Corsa.
"Corporations aren't people. I'm a people, you're a people, he's a people. We're not corporations. It's that simple," says Wanbaugh.
"Plus the fact that corporations have a different set of laws that they're supposed to abide to," Corsa says. "If they're going to be treated the same as a person, then let them take all their profits and pay them out in taxes. I don't think they'd like that."
"I think that anyone who would support something like this, after they actually read the language, is either deluded or malicious and calculating," says David Crocker, the director of the Center for Constitutional Government at the Maine Heritage Policy Center, a conservative advocacy group.
He says the "We The People" initiative is one of a several measures being proposed across the country which go too far in seeking to strip corporations of their constitutional rights.
"I'm reading from the We The People referendum: Section 1 - It says, 'Artificial entities established by the law of any state, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the people, through federal, state or local law,'" Crocker says. "We're not talking just about 1st Amendment free speech rights, we're talking about any rights at all."
And political science professor Brian Duff, from the University of New England, says the basic premise of the Citizens United decision, though under attack, can be made to sound reasonable.
"You can imagine if one person said, 'Well, I have $10, I think I'm going to go buy a soap box so I can stand up a little higher and have more people hear what I have to say.' That doesn't seem crazy. So if you extend the metaphor to, 'I have $10 million, and I'd like run a bunch of TV ads,' you know, it's all on a continuum," Duff says.
Still, Duff says Citizens United has come under fire in the court of public opinion, and in the halls of Congress. And he says he wouldn't be surprised if the We The People measure ends up being passed in Maine next year.
But, he says, the amendment would still have a long way to go before being a reality. Two-thirds of states need to take similar action and apply to Congress for the U.S. Constitution to be amended. After this, a drafted amendment would then have to be ratified by 75 percent of U.S. states.