The progressive group, Maine People's Alliance, has releasedits annual scorecard ranking lawmakers.
MPA Legislative Director Taryn Hallweaver says this year's report also includes what is being called a "will of the voters" score.
"So, when voters passed policies at the ballot box — in some cases by overwhelming margins — and then legislators came back to Augusta and said ‘Nah, I don't think so,’ or even went so far as to say that people didn't know what they were voting for, that the system was broken,” says Hallweaver. “In our mind, that was really unresponsive, and undemocratic, and worth examining."
No Republican lawmaker received a "will of the voters" score above a 36 out of 100, with most receiving zeros and single-digits.
But the Executive Director of Maine Republican party, Jason Savage, says the scores are meaningless.
"The will of the voters also puts all those representatives in the legislature,” Savage says. “It's not just referendum that's the will of the voters, it's people voting on their state representative and state senator and their governor who go to Augusta with the trust of the voters to do the right thing."
Savage says Republican lawmakers did what voters elected them to do and tried to limit impacts to the economy from a number of MPA-sponsored bills and ballot issues.
