Even though I’m no Sherlock Holmes I thought I’d have an easier time figuring out their names. My amateur sleuthing – aided by Google – led nowhere. It took three days of persistent efforts including several direct inquiries to the Secretary of State’s Office to obtain the identities of the slates of each party’s current Presidential Electors in Maine.
These are the candidates – four from each party – some 750-thousand Maine voters will in effect be choosing as their proxies to vote for president even though their names are conspicuously absent from the ballot.
To set the stage for this, each party nominates four presidential electors, one for each of the two congressional districts and two at large. Those who are “elected” will be those whose party’s candidate wins the popular vote in the area they represent.
Maine law – like that in 31 other states and DC – ostensibly binds the electors to vote for the candidate who wins the popular vote.
The electors are not necessarily ventriloquist puppeteers. In 2016, nationwide seven electors voted for someone who did not win the popular vote in their jurisdiction. Three others including Democrat David Bright of Dixmont, Maine also attempted to do so by voting for Bernie Sanders instead of Hillary Clinton. When advised, however, of an election law that might make his renegade action a misdemeanor, Bright re-cast his vote for Clinton.
Bright is again a presidential elector. He’s not, however, if Former Vice President Joe Biden wins the state-wide balloting, likely to reprise his intriguing gambit but instead is expected to support the party’s nominee.
Among the other Democratic electors in Maine this time include 18-year old Jay Philbrick of North Yarmouth. If Biden wins the popular vote in the First Congressional District the incoming Brown University freshman would be, according to research Philbick himself has been able to conduct, the youngest presidential elector in American history.
Contacted by this columnist a few days ago, Philbrick observed that even though he considers his role largely symbolic, “I’m proud to take this opportunity to show other young people the need to get involved in politics and help reform our system.”
The other two Democratic presidential elector nominees for Maine include Waldo County Commissioner Betty Johnson, who like Bright was also an elector in 2016. She was president of the Maine electoral college that year.
Probably the best known of all Democratic electors is Shenna Bellows. The Manchester based state senator now in her second term was the party’s nominee for the U.S. Senate six years ago when she lost to incumbent Susan Collins
On the Republican side are also several luminaries. Party chair Dr. Demi Kouzounas of Saco, a former president of the Maine Dental Association is among them. As leader of the GOP State Committee for nearly four years she has been in the vanguard of efforts to support President Trump, for whom she hopes to vote should the President win the First District, the area she was nominated to represent.
Though the President is considered a long shot to win the First District his chances are seen as stronger in the up state Second District, which he visited last Sunday, hoping to win the District again. If that happens the GOP elector who will be afforded the privilege of voting will be Peter LaVerdiere, a former chair of the Oxford Board of Selectmen, a long time civic leader in Oxford County, and a retired former sales manager for Prudential Financial.
The Republican Presidential Electors who would be voting if President Trump is the over-all state-wide winner are two former legislative leaders. They are Josh Tardy of Newport, the former GOP floor leader of the House ten years ago, now one of the state’s leading lobbyists in Augusta and Ellie Espling of New Gloucester, who was the assistant GOP House leader for four years until term limited in 2018.
Green, Libertarian and Alliance parties have also qualified for a ballot position for their presidential nominees. Should voting for their candidates deprive any nominee from capturing more than 50-percent then the election in Maine would become subject to ranked choice run-off. If it does it would be the first time in history such a process will have ever been brought to bear for any state’s vote for president.
The identity of proposed presidential electors in Maine was not always so elusive. Their names for most of the state’s 200-year history were printed on the ballot itself and voted upon individually. This meant that one could split a ticket between the parties when voting for electors. If that were still the case this year, for example, it would mean that a voter could cast a ballot for Democratic elector Shenna Bellows while at the same time supporting Republican elector Josh Tardy. It’s one reason why some states could historically split their electoral votes between the presidential candidates, especially if a personally popular elector were running pledged to an otherwise less popular presidential nominee.
The experience Maine had the last time it voted this way, 1948, illustrates how such an outcome could occur. The elector running on the GOP side, Dixfield attorney Arthur Stowell, captured 1,400 more than were cast for his fellow GOP elector Allen Munroe of Milo. An even greater spread, nearly 2,000 votes, separated two of the Democratic electors, Carmelle Boucher of Lewiston from Myra McLean of Augusta…
(All five of the Democratic electors that year were women.)
Though the 1948 election in Maine did not give rise to a split verdict the opportunity to reach such a result – in that case, for example, dividing Maine’s electoral vote between the Republican nominee Thomas Dewey and Democrat Harry Truman – did exist.
It was an era with less polarization than our own, one in which many voters had a more difficult time making such decisions, torn as one might be between the candidates. Under the system existing in 1948 in Maine, for example, a voter who was perhaps 60 percent of a mind to vote for the GOP choice but 40 percent inclined to vote for a Democrat could split his or her vote by choosing three of the Republican electors and two of the Democrats..
In some ways one laments the passage of a time when it was possible to vote in this fashion and when more people felt this way. Today’s divisive climate is enough to arouse a wistful yearning for a balance that was once reflected by such voting methods.
Paul Mills is a Farmington attorney well known for his analyses and historical understanding of public affairs in Maine; he can be reached by e-mail at pmills@myfairpoint.net.
