I have been a life time resident of Franklin County, five of my family of six have received their education and degrees from University of Maine Farmington. The youngest of my children is currently attending RIT in New York where he voted by absentee ballot. We have raised our children to be respectful and highly engaged in their community. Everyone that knows me, knows I am passionate about the things I feel strongly about. I try to always be friendly, helpful, engaged, and most of all respectful. I spent election day encouraging and thanking many of the public for turning out to vote. I want to thank the many people that reached out to me and supported my voter educational efforts.
I consider the University of Maine at Farmington a critical piece of our region’s success and a true community partner. I worked at UMF for 23 years and my wife is currently employed there. The University prides itself in encouraging civic engagement and diversity. Unfortunately, some of their professional staff and other community members felt differently on election day by spreading false information through emails and social media, this even after they found out that I was passing out voter educational information taken directly from the Secretary of State’s website and cleared by that office to do so. While this “professional” group was unnecessarily alarming university students with false information while decrying, “That is why it is important to ensure students understand their voting rights.” I was passing out a fact sheet with the State’s information to voters explaining their voting rights and some of the responsibilities of being a Maine Resident. Education informs the voting process, it does not intimidate it. The published and false statements made by this group were demeaning and bothersome to myself and my family members.
On Oct. 3, 2018 – Channel 6 News ran a story with the title: Verify: Can you vote in Maine without a state ID? Anyone who currently lives in Maine can vote in the state, even if they do not have a Maine ID. The story was compiled by reporter Hannah Dineen.
The story went on to report that just about anybody can vote in Maine, “if you’re living in Maine, there’s a way to vote here.” Which for the most part is correct. What activated my right to peaceful civic engagement using my First Amendment right, was that the story did not fully inform the public. I felt that those individuals that were currently considered residents from another state, should know that by registering to vote, they have now declared and established that they have become a Maine Resident. As a Maine Resident, it is important to know that there are other civic responsibilities and legal obligations past the right to vote. To be clear, none of these other legal obligations can impinge on their right to vote. These other legal obligations include the changing of one’s driver’s license to a Maine license (Title 29 Section 1251) and the registering of their owned vehicles in Maine within 30 days of becoming a Maine Resident, and the chance that they may need to pay Maine state taxes. I offered individuals educational information from the Secretary of State’s web site that would allow them to make an “informed decision” and to educate them in order to avoid being in violation of Maine state laws tied to being an established Maine Resident (not to their right to vote).
It seems in today’s world it is alright to create a false narrative even if it is based on incorrect information and hearsay, and even after the true facts are known. I believe that our greater Farmington and State community is better than this and should be open to all kinds of civic engagement and diversity activities, including that of our own individual peaceful civic actions and to our basic right to freedom of speech.
I will continue to be an active and engaged individual. I will also continue to be friendly, helpful, and most of all respectful. I encourage everyone to take a step back and be more respectful in their interactions and comments and to take the time to verify information before making judgments or other misleading statements.
William (Bill) Crandall
Farmington
My word,, from all the commotion I thought this guy was clobbering college kids with a tire iron at the polling place.
Easily triggered, hysterical people.
Thin skinned and intolerant.
Let me rephrase that,, bunch of wimps.
Thanks for your Civic Service Mr Crandall.
Bill, I’m with you 100% and I fully agree and understand why you are concerned. Such was the case even after the 2016 elections, studies showed that there were 1000’s of voters registered in two and three states. Not surprisingly, for example after the study several democratic candidates and and poll workers were found to have voted in multiple states, two and three times including voting for dead relatives and even comatose sister. These were charged and convicted of multiple counts.
“It’s too easy to vote twice, it comes down to your honor,” said Jay DeLancy, executive director of North Carolina volunteer voting watchdog group The Voting Integrity Project…”
I did a little more research on this and found that voting fraud during the 2012 voting was live and well. A 2012 Pew Center on The States study said “approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state.” Pew said 68,000 people were registered in three states, and 1,807 were even registered in three states.
Nuff Said…
Bill Crandall’s partisan antics are well known and not universally appreciated, nor are they respectful. Crowing about “Christmas coming early” after the 2016 election and telling known Democrats “now you know how we felt after 8 years of Obama” a few months into Trump’s administration when the ugliness of Trump politics was only in its infancy is not okay if you do it all with a respectful smile.
This is not education nor a public service. Bill, you should seriously be ashamed of yourself for hiding behind the cloak of “Free Speech” in order to make a thinly-veiled effort at voter suppression. Your only goal was clearly to prevent students attending UMF from exercising their right to vote.
As a college student at UMF, students can establish a voting residence at their Maine school address if they have a present intention to remain at that address for the time being, whether that residence is a dorm, apartment, house or even a hotel. Maine law expressly provides that they will not gain or lose residency solely because of their presence in or absence from the state while attending school, and this provision may not be interpreted “to prevent a student at any institution of learning from qualifying as a voter” in the town “where the student resides while attending” that school.
Heading to the polls with large signs intended to scare away UMF students is not respectful civic engagement. Rather, this is partisan politicking at the voter booth intended to intimidate a select group of people and suppress their vote. I am not making judgments, but merely stating the facts. That was Bill’s clear intention even if he hides behind the guise of education and free speech.
Well done.
Poppycock. If your goal was to educate, you would have done this very in a very different way. As it was, one of the Republican candidates standing on the stairs at the community center predicted that the effect of your actions would be to drive up turnout at UMF, and that’s exactly what happened. Perhaps the students should thank you.
You could have called it “voter education” if you had done it, on campus, a month before the election. “Informing” voters on election day, after it is too late to use this new information in deciding whether to vote absentee or register in their current municipality, can only scare people not to vote. If education was your true purpose, you should have been more thoughtful about WHEN you were “informing of the voting process”.
Dennis you are only telling half the facts. Mr. Crandall was filling them in on the other half. Be quiet now and stop whining and trying to twist things around.
If the only way your team can win is through intimidation and cheating, you’re a loser.
I literally cannot imagine what it must be like to wake up in the morning and seek out something to be offended by, to need to be that negative all the time. So he made a poster of voting rules, they should be posted at polling places anyway.
So the UMF community was pretty torqued up which where the outcry started. From my what I understand, many emails were sent to the entire ‘list serve’ UMF email list which is both salary and hourly employees. This makes a pretty broad assumption that all faculty and staff agree with individual Haszko position. After listening to an another individual who had to endure the ‘non work related’ ‘activist’ ‘engage the secretary of state’ emails one might consider that a difficult work environment is in place for those who do not agree with a certain political agenda. An agenda that is entrenched in the entire organization…whilst not a UMF employee but an agent of the company, Mr. Cummings, President at USM recent statement regarding another matter may be in order. “University policy makes it absolutely clear that our public, taxpayer funded institutions must be non-partisan in terms of political activity and institutionally impartial in all politics, religious, and social matters that are unrelated to our universities’ core mission of education, research and public service”…further, UMS Chancellor Mr. Page stated “The use of institutional resources to advance a partisan agenda violates Board policies established to ensure Maine’s public universities remain non-partisan and politically neutral”.
I propose, rather than a hundred emails (a institutional resource) an individual with an opposing view to Mr. Crandall have spent some time ‘under the tent’ with him. Wouldn’t that have been ok? Cmon. Grow up. Communicate in a civil way. “No one wins when the goal is only to settle a score”