AUGUSTA, Maine — A year from November, Maine voters could be greeted by a record number of citizen initiatives as they enter the ballot box: from measures aimed at welfare and tax reform to raising the minimum wage and legalizing marijuana.
All of those initiatives could affect elections of candidates at both the state and federal level.
Citizens initiatives are not easy to get on the ballot. Supporters will have until Feburary to collect nearly 62,000 certified, valid signatures from Maine voters to qualify for the 2016 fall ballot.
Right now there are seven ballot questions at various stages in the process. Tony Corrado, a government professor at Colby College, says both welfare and taxes are issues that stir strong reactions with some voters.
"One can see why they want to get it on the ballot, because it's an issue that is important to a lot of voters here in the state," he says. "Generally it would be seen as a way to help boost the turnout among more conservative voters, more Republican voters."
And that would at least partially offset the draw of more progressive voters that's expected from the minimum wage initiative and the two marijuana legalization proposals.
Maine has always done very well in presidential election years, usually ranking in the top two or three states for turnout, but these ballot questions could attract even more voters of different stripes, giving an advantage to one candidate or another.
Jim Melcher, a political science professor at the University of Maine at Farmington, believes the measure that would require background checks for gun show purchases has the potential to bring out more conservative voters than any of the other issues on the ballot.
"Firearms owners tend to care more about the issue, are more likely to turn out and vote on the issue and as a result of that the raw public opinion numbers don't always add up," he says.
Melcher says surveys are screened for all registered voters, and don't always reflect the opinions of those who actually go out and vote for an issue or for a candidate. He says that's why one candidate may be leading by a few points in the polls but lose on Election Day.
He says it's very hard to predict how issues on the ballot will interact with candidate campaigns. Last year exit polls showed that the turnout on the bear hunting referendum did help the re-election of Gov. Paul LePage and contributed to the election of Bruce Poliquin to the 2nd Congressional District seat.
Because of that potential, Bowdoin College government professor Mike Franz says there will be efforts on both sides to keep the petition drives from being successful.
"So if they are able to get those things on the ballot there could be legal questions that ensue about whether they have actually reached the threshold in those cases," he says.
There could also be organized efforts to urge voters not to sign the petitions, as seen in past elections, but what if all petition drives are successful, who will benefit? That is a very difficult question, says University of Maine political science professor Mark Brewer.
"So that fact that you have got something like welfare reform and income tax cut, the fact that it is one question, I think if I had to say someone was going to get a benefit I'm going to go with the Republicans, but I don't think anyone is going to get a huge benefit," he says.
Brewer says many contests are decided by only a few percentage points. And in legislative races even a very small advantage could decide the outcome. In 2014, dozens of contests were decided by margins of less than a hundred votes.
